Action Packed! Fun for everyone But Slow Ending.
The Book of Secrets was a good follow-up movie to the first movie, but left me a little disappointed in places. Actually, for the theatrical release, the film was called "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," but for the DVD release, the title was changed to "National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets."
With a film this big, you first have to be able to sell the audience on the idea and then work to make it believable. This just did not happen for me. Nicholas Cage is always perfect for this role and he always seems to fit the part, but the others in this movie were very outside of the movie. There was a bit problems early on when the Director of photography Amir M. Mokri was replaced by John Schwartzman several months into shooting. This was reportedly due to "creative differences" between Mokri and director Jon Turteltaub.
The hardest thing for me to buy as a film viewer was why The President was so eager the go along with Ben Gates (Cage) about exploring the secret passageway. Well, firstly The President mentions that he was an Architecture History major at Yale, so secret passageways (especially under such a historical site as Mount Vernon) would be of extraordinary interest to him. In the first film, the gold was given to the people of the world by Gates. It wasn't as if Gates was a regular person out of the blue. So he was a bit famous, which helped the president trust him. We must suspend our disbelief, however, to imagine that he would join Gates without a Secret Service agent. Coupled with this is the fact that Gates was famous for doing just what they did; exploring old buildings and such. In light of this, he would probably be the closest thing to an expert that there was and, therefore, the President would probably feel safe with him. Actually, Bruce Greenwood, who played the President, previously played President John F Kennedy in the movie Thirteen Days (2000).
Funny things exist, but the coincidence of overlapping commonalities between this film and The Rock (1996) are stunning:
#1. The man who has his Range Rover stolen by Mitch Wilkinson is costumer Hans Georg Struhar. His cameo is also an in-joke: his Humvee was stolen in The Rock (1996) as well, a film also produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and also starring Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris.
2. In The Rock (1996), Nicholas Cage's character is given information that leads him to a hidden roll of microfilm containing government secrets, including information about the Kennedy assassination (just as the "Book of Secrets" contains). Ed Harris plays the villain in both films.
3. This is the second movie in which Cage sees proof of some of America's greatest conspiracy theories, such as Area 51 and the John F. Kennedy assassination. The other was The Rock (1996). Coincidently, the main antagonist in both films is played by Ed Harris.
Also, Nicholas Cage has won an Academy Award for "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995) and the actor and actress who played his parents (Jon Voight and Helen Mirren) are also Academy Award winners for "Coming Home" (1978) and "The Queen" (2006), respectively.
Some parts, including the ending, were very slow and cumbersome to watch.
The Father and Mother bickering interaction thing was very distracting to the plot and made it quite unpleasant to see them together at the end of film.
The supposed Kidnapping of the Pres. was a little too far-fetched for even me.
I'll give this a 3/5 rating.
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