I complained before in my NATIONAL TREASURE review of how ludacris that whole plot set-up for the treasure was.
Now having seen its sequel BOOK OF SECRETS, I spoke way way way too soon about "ridiculous."
I mean, at least that whole set-up of the Templar/Mason treasure made simplistic sense, even if perhaps too exaggerated. But now with SECRETS, where Cental/South American ancient peoples build a city of gold up in South Dakota to Queen Victoria helping the Confederacy to George A. Custer searching for the city itself, quite frankly the clues and scheme of BOOK OF SECRETS makes no sense at all.
The primary problem I felt with the first TREASURE picture was how for such an adventure story, it felt lukewarm. To put it another way, An undercooked action tempo that never ignited. Starting from the car-chase in London, I quit trying to logically comprehend the story and simply went with the visual narrative like I did with Brian DePalma's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE.
Director John Turtletaub continues and actually improves his competent direction from the previous picture by hooking me into chase after chase which distracted me enough to quit wondering how someone can digitally control Buckingham Palace as easily as an electric razor. At least that sidekick is actually useful and meaningful this time around beyond being the one-liner machine with feet.
What pushes BOOK OF SECRETS though into a passively entertaining time at the theatres is Ed Harris. For such great actors involved and not given much to work with, Harris takes nothing and uses his awesome presence and masculine charisma to actually accelerate the film's tension by himself.
From THE RIGHT STUFF to THE ABYSS to APOLLO 13 and to the recent GONE BABY GONE, Harris is currently the best working-American actor have never won an Oscar.
Now that's a bigger disgrace than Nic Cage's haircut.
There is other throwaways I enjoyed, from Cage going hyperbole with an argument at the Palace to Helen Mirren's fighting with Jon Voight, to the underrated Bruce Greenwood being awesome in his (too) brief shots as the President.*
In a way, I actually sorta enjoyed BOOK OF SECRETS, for it had something that was absent in TREASURE.....moments of real narrative energy. Plus, the American theatrical release is tagged with a new charming Goofy "How to..."cartoon, so that's a plus. Though I must say, is it a problem if I liked that joker at the Home Entertainment System more than I did the movie?
*=Anyone think its weird how the "Book of Secrets" has a chapter on the JFK assassination, whom Greenword portrayed in THIRTEEN DAYS?
