Review: National Treasure
Disney and Bruckheimer pair up nicely again, making up for last year’s not so royal King Arthur (certainly according to the domestic box office). It’s not all sunshine and roses though, as this movie races past you with high speed the whole two hours.
Any (typical) Bruckheimer movie can’t escape the comparison process with previous hits, so to start off, within 20 minutes you will realise the fast cut scene changes will not endow this movie with any depth (which was done much better in, say, The Rock). The story twists high paced storytelling with evenly high paced dialogue and chase scenes (same as any other Bruckheimer movie). The structure doesn’t leave much room for the characters to develop either (again, done better in, say, The Rock, or Bad Boys), leaving the chemistry to react only at the most basic levels. The Nicolas Cage/Diane Kruger (love), Cage/Jon Voight (son/father), Cage/Sean Bean (former friend turned enemy) and Cage/Bartha (friend) relationships are all standardised and have nothing more special than the actors can churn out the all too familiar dialogue (which any avid movie watcher can finish after hearing only the first half of the lines) (again, done better in, say, The Rock). Just as unimpressive is the music, under Trevor Rabin’s care, who tries to pull a Hans Zimmer, but fails pretty hard, as after the first 10 minutes the theme already grows old (again, done better in, say, The Rock or Crimson Tide).
Then again, it ain’t all that bad either. See it as a contemporary Indiana Jones, but with the detoriation that always comes with carbon copies.7.