“National Treasure: Book of Secrets” sends our archaeologist hero, Ben Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) on a globetrotting quest to find another secret treasure, all the while restoring his family’s good name.
The returning cast includes Ben’s archaeologist father, Patrick Gates (Jon Voight); Ben’s personal tech support and sidekick, Riley Poole (Justin Bartha); and Ben’s now ex-girlfriend, Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger), whose brief romance with the press secretary (Ty Burrell) of the president of the United States affords the gang the opportunity to search for clues in the Oval Office.
The new faces in the adventure are Ben’s mother, who also happens to be Patrick’s estranged ex-wife, Emily Appleton (Helen Mirren), a scholar of ancient languages; and a rival archaeologist and Confederate sympathizer named Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris), who boldly accuses a Gates ancestor, Thomas Gates (Joel Gretsch), of collaborating in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln with John Wilkes Booth.
Booth shot Lincoln on the same night that he and a co-conspirator forced Thomas Gates into translating a diary page the disclosed Cibola, the lost city of gold. In order to clear the Gates family name, Ben and the gang must prove the existence of Cibola by finding the long-dispersed fragments of a map. One of the pieces happens to be hidden in a secret book that is handed down from president to president.
Producer/director Jon Turteltaub deserves kudos for laying hold of the…keep reading
January 10, 2008 at 8:22 pm
This is a very fun movie and you provided a great synopsis and review. That IS the best line in the movie, got a great laugh when I saw it. Kudos. Also, while wathcing it, I was reminded of another similar conspiracy theory: The Ice Cream Fridae Mystery. This is a covert dessert than only elite individuals consume and, so far, no one has been able to ascertain the recipe. If only Jon Turteltaub had included that too.