![]() ![]() You’re telling me that Nic Cage is just allowed to have a casual conversation with this guy and isn’t being touted as a terrorist and getting terminated on site? No chance. Then it’s suddenly a great idea! Additionally, Harvey Keitel’s FBI agent character seems more amused than angry that Nic Cage decided to steal one of America’s most important documents from one of America’s most important museums. Bean is all for it, but Cage finds the idea preposterous, wrong, and downright unpatriotic… for about ten minutes. Perhaps the biggest sin is that the main rift between our hero, Nic Cage (who cares about his character’s name, he’s just Nic Cage), and Sean Bean’s evil British villain (whose big thing is that he’s evil and also British) is over whether or not they should steal the Declaration of Independence. Everything else - the relationships between the characters, the attempts at snappy dialogue, the actual sequence of events - all fall flat or end up forgotten throughout the film. The bits of “history” that are used to tell the story come across as if the writers all got exceptionally drunk, watched a couple Ken Burns documentaries, maybe “Rocky IV” just for some added patriotism, and included whatever they remembered. The first thing that must be discussed is the script. What couldn’t be great about that? Well, considering I was four years old when the film came out in theaters, I probably should have expected that nostalgia and immaturity may have clouded my memory. ” From what I remembered, this was a fast-paced, historical treasure-hunting romp throughout America’s landmarks, chock full of clever riddles and breathtaking action. I’ll be honest, I had quite high expectations when revisiting “National Treasure. Considering the media attention that this early 2000s film is currently getting, I believe that this movie deserves a rewatch to decide once and for all if it is worthy of redemption. Disney has certainly taken notice, as a “National Treasure” series has been reportedly greenlit for Disney+ and a third film in the franchise is rumored to be on the table. Famed film critic, Roger Ebert, ended his 2-star review by stating that the film “is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.” Stephen Holden for the New York Times similarly called the film a “sluggish two-hour trudge.” While critics may have turned their nose up at this movie, the film has become part of the modern cultural zeitgeist, especially among the generation who saw it as children and somehow never forgot it. While the film was a box office success, grossing nearly $350 million to its reported $100 million budget, the Rotten Tomatoes score has the film at a poor 46%. The film stars Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates, a historian who uses clues left by American Freemasons to find a hidden map on the back of the Declaration of Independence that may lead him to the greatest treasure ever hidden. “National Treasure” is a 2004 Disney action-adventure movie directed by Jon Turtletaub and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. ![]() Ben Gates: I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence. ![]()
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