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The careering Cage

An unpopped popcorn movie
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 20th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
"Look, a sequel plot!" If only the film would have stayed below ground.
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National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Directed by Jon Turteltaub
With Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris, Bruce Greenwood and Harvey Keitel

The very public career suicide of Nicolas Cage continues apace. Like the death-driven drunk Ben Sanderson in Leaving Las Vegas (for which the actor won an Oscar), Cage appears determined to wantonly discard the last scraps of honor he has as an actor and ham himself into oblivion.
The Cage filmography over the past few years reads like an inventory of the DVD discount bin at Wal-Mart: Next, Ghost Rider, the needless remake of Wicker Man and the risible World Trade Center. After peaking in 2002 with an excellent performance in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation, it’s been a classic Skid Row slide since, only momentarily halted in 2005 with Lord of War, which now seems more like a fluke.
What this dismal roster of inane flicks has in common is that they were as much financial failures as artistic ones. The exception during this period was 2004’s National Treasure, an attempt at a modern Indiana Jones, complete with all the maps and mysteries beloved of pre-teen boys and believers of Freemasonry cabals. Considering the extent of that audience, the film turned a mighty profit — so much so that we are now burdened with its sequel, as well as with threats of future adventures.
The National Treasure scripts are the standard connect-the-dots treasure setups with a side order of Da Vinci Code conspiracy. The characters are a plumber’s idea of professors, historians, geologists and intellectuals. All are out to not only solve long-buried puzzles, but to shed further light on the nefarious reach of the secret group of the audience’s own personal mania: the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, et. al. Were the filmmakers of a Hitlerian frame of mind, we might be treated to the skulduggery associated with the Elders of Zion.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets attempts many things, besides moving the Olmec of Mexico into the Dakotas and giving them a written language that looks suspiciously like Chinese ideograms. The adventure assigned to our heroes and villains is to trudge their way from Booth’s assassination of Lincoln to fabled El Dorado, taking in Mount Vernon, Mount Rushmore, the Library of Congress and the public loos at Buckingham Palace along the way (and yes, toilets are funny).
After a rogue scholar (Ed Harris) shows up with evidence that seems to implicate that the ancestor of Ben Gates (Cage) and his father Patrick (Jon Voight) was in on the Lincoln assassination, father and son spring into action to try to clear their family name. When the evidence is expertly scrutinized by Ben’s estranged wife, Abigail (Diane Kruger), remnants of a cipher are discovered on the back. Before long, Abigail, Ben and his annoying comic sidekick Riley (a muscular Andy Devine named Justin Bartha) are off across the globe to track down the lost city of gold before the bad guys find it.
Popcorn movies are all very fine and well, but there’s no law stating that they must be mindless. Indiana Jones remains a milestone, as it was not just escapism, but came with a good dash of cleverness and not a little camp wit. What makes the National Treasure outings so tedious is that they lack both brains and a wry self-awareness. What passes as humor is confined to the asides of that defunct frat-house mascot, Riley: “What are we going to do next, short-sheet the Pope’s bed?” As delivered by the nasal Bartha, it’s even less funny than it reads, if such a thing can be imagined.
The Aguirre: Wrath of Disney conclusion in the bowels of Rushmore is the greatest squandering of good actors since Airport 1975, with Cage, Voight and Harris joined by Helen Mirren, Harvey Keitel and Bruce Greenwood. It falls to Greenwood, as the President of the United States, to briefly set up the launch for National Treasure III. We can only hope that the screenwriters’ strike resumes before then.
    

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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