National Treasure (2004) Review

Time: 131 Minutes
Age Rating: contains low level violence
Cast:
Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates
Sean Bean as Ian Howe
Diane Kruger as Dr. Abigail Chase
Justin Bartha as Riley Poole
Jon Voight as Patrick Henry Gates
Harvey Keitel as Agent Peter Sadusky
Christopher Plummer as John Adams Gates
Director: Jon Turteltaub

Modern treasure hunters, led by archaeologist Ben Gates, search for a chest of riches rumored to have been stashed away by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin during the Revolutionary War. The chest’s whereabouts may lie in secret clues embedded in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and Gates is in a race to find the gold before his enemies do.

I remember watching National Treasure for the first time, I was quite young at the time, and it was the first film I saw that had Nicolas Cage in it. I enjoyed it but wondered how it would be on rewatch, and whether it would still hold up over a decade and a half later. Thankfully, I think I can say that it does. While its not great, National Treasure is still a lot of fun to watch.

The story is a fairly interesting and fun adventure with a lot of excitement throughout, helped by the fast pace. You’re right there with the main characters as they make discoveries and solve puzzles in order to unravel the central mystery. As far as adventure movies go, it occasionally meets its aspirations, but could’ve been better. As it is, it’s a solid riff on much better action adventure movies. Its not just limited to the main characters exploring tombs, there’s also a conspiracy aspect, as well as a heist aspect. The history and science are definitely messy and aren’t realistic, but it is an absurd movie overall. One of the things most known about this movie is that a key part involves Nicolas Cage having to steal the Declaration of Independence, and that is gloriously silly as that sounds. Even some of the logic of the plot can be hilarious. Nicolas Cage and Sean Bean start off hunting treasure together, but they separate when Bean wants to steal the Declaration of Independence and Cage doesn’t want to. So when Bean decides to go get it himself, Cage decides to go and steal it first. Thankfully, National Treasure has the right tone, not taking itself too seriously, but not going too overboard and risking becoming a self parody.

The cast are quite enjoyable. Nicolas Cage made for a charismatic, likable and entertaining lead as Ben Gates. Its definitely not one of his craziest performances in some of his other movies like Face/Off, but he gave his character a lot of energy, and is fun to watch. Diane Kruger is also good, and Justin Bartha is solid as the comic relief with some great comedic timing. There are also other great actors who have parts to play in this, including Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel and Christopher Plummer. Sean Bean is the villain and while the writing for him is nothing special, he does deliver on his part as an antagonist.

If there’s an aspect of National Treasure that I wished was better, it was the direction. Jon Turteltaub’s work is decent, but it needed something more. The action is relatively fun, there are some good environments sets and designs, and the score from Trevor Rabin is good (especially the catchy main theme). Its just that there’s nothing distinct about this movie on a directing or style level that separates it from other similar movies.

National Treasure is comparable to The Mummy movies starring Brendan Fraser, not the best action-adventure movies (i.e. not on the level of Indiana Jones), but nonetheless very entertaining for what it is. It’s a fun ride that doesn’t take itself too seriously, helped by the solid cast led by Nicolas Cage. If you haven’t seen it already, I think its worth checking out.

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The Meg (2018) Review

Time: 113 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor
Li Bingbing as Suyin Zhang
Rainn Wilson as Jack Morris
Ruby Rose as Jaxx Herd
Winston Chao as Dr. Minway Zhang
Cliff Curtis as James “Mac” Mackreides
Director: Jon Turteltaub

A massive creature attacks a deep-sea submersible, leaving it disabled and trapping the crew at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. With time running out, rescue diver Jonas Taylor must save the crew and the ocean itself from an unimaginable threat — a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark known as the Megalodon.

The Meg marks the end of the Summer Blockbusters season of 2018. In the lead up to its release, I have been having mixed feelings about it. Honestly while the movie looked like it could be fun, it felt that there are so many ways that this wouldn’t work. Yes, the idea of watching Jason Statham take on a giant shark sounds cool and all, but yet there was something about it that didn’t have me immensely hyped. Fortunately it turned out rather well. The Meg is not a great movie, and it does have its fair share of problems but I can’t deny that it’s still rather entertaining.

I found out in the end credits that The Meg is actually based on a book, but since I haven’t read the book I won’t make any comparisons between it and the movie. Something I should establish early is that despite the latest trailer working well, all the moments about the meg attacking people on the beach are from the third act. So don’t expect an hour and 50 minutes of that. The Meg doesn’t have the greatest of writing and is very straightforward and almost a little generic. The humour doesn’t really work like 95% percent of the time, and it can really miss. There is a forced kind of relationship between Jason Statham and Li Bingbing’s characters which kind of comes out of nowhere. Even though the latest trailer made it seem like a completely goofy shark flick, The Meg does have a weird mix of goofiness and seriousness. It actually quite surprised me how serious this movie felt a lot of the time. Most of the time you can look past it but whenever it tries to get very dramatic and when people are killed off, you don’t really feel anything. Despite its problems, I generally had fun throughout. It got better over time and by the time it got to the third act, I forgot about most of the problems. If you know what you’re in for, than you’ll probably like it.

Jason Statham is as usual entertaining and likable in the lead role and he does very well to lead this movie. The rest of the cast, which consists of Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose and others do well enough in their roles, but their characters don’t have enough depth. With that said, I didn’t really expect the characters to be really complex or anything, and they work well enough for the movie.

The direction of this movie by Jon Turteltaub is pretty good, it looks good and the CGI bits most of the time are decent enough. It does have some jumpscares, and annoying as they may be, a couple of them made me jump a bit. The tension is generally done well, I didn’t worry too much about the characters because I knew everything would be fine and all that (not to mention the film didn’t really give enough reason to care about them), but nonetheless a lot of the scenes can be very thrilling. However the movie does feel like it was held back a little bit, like it might’ve benefited a lot more had it been more over the top and more outrageous. Originally, Eli Roth wanted to direct this movie but because he wanted an R rating, the studio passed on him. While The Meg still works fine enough with a PG-13/M rating, I think it would’ve benefited from an R rating, with them going all out with it.

The Meg does have some faults and there are some aspects that could’ve been improved that would’ve made it better (like going all out with an R rating or outrageous and over the top) but on the whole, I had fun with what we got. If you saw all the trailers for The Meg and thought that you’d like it, go and see it, you’ll probably like it. I personally had a good time with it, and it was a good way to end 2018’s Summer Blockbuster season.