A Retrospective - National Treasure

I must admit, I’ve seen the movie National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage from 2004 about 10 times in my life. So once again, I watched it on Saturday night with my parents, filled up with pizza and with a more analytical eye this time. And…it was interesting.

First, I want to dispel all notion that this is one of those crazy Nic Cage freakout movies where he sings a polka song while destroying a pool table (yes, that’s a thing). On re-watch, there aren’t any supreme Nic Cage freakout moments, with probably the closest being a moment where he gives a toast to the high treason of the American revolution and chugs a wine glass while holding onto it from the base (relatively tame). There’s a great freakout moment in the sequel, but this isn’t the sequel, so there.

National Treasure combined the worship of archaeology and discovery from Indiana Jones with the insanity of Tomb Raider in the hopes of creating 2004’s big blockbuster of the summer. And it did succeed in becoming a huge blockbuster, grossing $347 million dollars and inspiring a sequel which made even more money.

Among that $347 million was a receipt from my American history/Nicolas Cage enthusiast mother, who then bought the DVD which I have ravenously watched and re-watched. And that brings me to my first praise of this movie – for the target demographic of family, it succeeds in entertaining them pretty well. It also has a great moral for kids about bringing history to the world rather than hoarding it to yourself.

But watching this movie again on Saturday as a cynical movie reviewer, my opinion of the film has somewhat downgraded from “best treasure-huntin’ movie ever”.

The biggest problem with this movie is the dialogue, particularly from Nicolas Cage. It sounds so dumb and overstated, almost like a satirical comedy sketch at points, and the exposition slipped in for character backstory does not feel natural. In fact, at one point in the movie, Diane Kruger straight-up says “Nobody talks like that” to Nicolas Cage, who just shrugs it off. Doesn’t excuse it, however.

The writing also just loses all logic at points, way beyond the degree of a typical blockbuster and into “what the hell are you doing?!” territory. This ties a bit into the dialogue in how the characters phrase certain requests, but also straight up into the set design (why are the women’s and men’s changerooms in this shop separated by only a wooden square that’s only 5 feet above the ground?) and many of the characters actions (look the letters up online or photograph them instead of risking suspicion by walking into a museum 12 different times to make partial notes!).

I can accept some of the dumb stuff in this movie to keep the plot moving forward, mainly in the heist scenes as they make more sense, but there is a ton of stuff that I could mention here. This could be a great drunk-with-friends movie if you want to laugh at every dumb thing that happens with fellow film nerds.

The big appeal of this movie would obviously be the action and the heists, so how are they?

The heists in this movie are pretty great. There’s plenty of thought put into how they are executed, and they follow a mostly logical through line compared to the rest of the movie. The rest of the action is okay, but there are definitely flaws I’m going to talk about.

Jon Turteltaub directed this movie, and also directed The Meg (which I don’t like). His work here reminded me strangely of Paul W.S. Anderson’s movies like Alien vs. Predator, where there are a ton of artificial zooms and post-production camera movements during the action to try and make it seem more exciting. The editing was also reminiscent of Anderson, where it would suddenly go to rapid cutting at random points, and despite the excellent stuntwork, the director would awkwardly cut to a close-up of the actor despite the incredibleness of the stunt being performed.

For example, in a car chase scene, Diane Kruger’s character is hanging on the rear door of a truck as it swings back and forth, and a bus drives by, requiring the truck to swerve. If this was a long unbroken take, it would look REALLY cool. But in the middle of it, Turteltaub cuts to a close-up of a non-swinging Diane Kruger which is clearly on a set somewhere, undermining the scene.

Turteltaub handles the technical aspects of this movie just fine. The set design is pretty cool (although it improves in the sequel) and I do love the score by Trevor Rabin, in all of its ridiculously epic glory. Cinematography-wise, it’s fine, although undermined by the artificial camera zooms and the fact that a 4-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer (Caleb Deschanel) couldn’t really do a lot of inventive stuff.

As I already said, Nicolas Cage doesn’t have any great freakout moments in this movie. He’s fine in the role, although definitely saddled by his dialogue at points, and it’s nowhere near as bad as he can get. Still, it would be nice if he dropped some of the treasure hunting pretension and had a bit more chemistry with Kruger beyond their shared enthusiasm of defacing historical documents.

Sean Bean is Sean Bean, mercurial and compelling as a villain who you’d believe would kill for a drink, and Harvey Keitel is also just Harvey Keitel, doing his job well. Jon Voight has a couple of good moments, and he and Nick Cage are believable as father and son. The best actor in this movie is probably Justin Bartha, who acts as the comic relief and gets a couple of good lines in, although he does suffer at points from the dialogue.

The best parts of this movie are the final scenes underneath a church when uncovering the treasure. Not only is there the best line in the film (“Why does that never happen to me?”) and the best set piece involving a collapsing elevator, but the actual discovery of the treasure, accompanied by Trevor Rabin’s soaring score and an excellent series of shots, is excellent.

Overall, on rewatch, National Treasure is not as good as I remember. But I will admit, it’s still fun, especially for younger kids, and I will still consider it and the sequel a guilty pleasure. I constantly await the third one with bated breath, knowing it will probably never come as Nicolas Cage becomes too much of a meme.

I’m going to give National Treasure a C+.

If you want me to review the sequel, have at it. What do you think of National Treasure? Leave your answers in the comments below.