If you're going to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets, planning to spend the money and the time, I have to assume you know what you're in for. It's no secret which movies get the big Christmas releases and what sort of scripts Disney throws at its live action franchises. You can expect more plot holes and logical slick spots than a presidential address, dialogue like nails down a chalk board and a strict policy of, "we'll fix it in post-production," to any sort of problem. Everything about this film is embarrassing and caters to a level of consumption so stunted that the DVD should probably be labeled a choking hazard. But, judging from the grosses, that's ok. So long as the alternative is, in some key way, worse. There is no accountability in entertainment. None of this is new, not to me and not to the movie going public. In fact, I had thought myself used to it and past this kind of nit-picky bitching, the sort that points out the obvious to audiences that have long since communicated clearly that they do not care. But I guess I still had a last threshold of pain, a line to be crossed where once again I could be bothered by bad movies. I mean, I've seen my share of this sort: Transformers, Tomb Raider, Independence Day, Armageddon and a slew of others whose titles have blended together into a congealed mass, now sealed in some psycho-spiritual bile duct, somewhere in my brain, that will probably rupture one day and kill me. What makes Notational Treasure: Book of Secrets stand out is not its diabolical misuse of a phenomenal cast (a group that has nearly as much Oscar gold among them as a luncheon meeting between John Ford and Katherine Hepburn) nor its supercilious short handing of story telling convention (there's a scene, set in Paris, where Nick Cage's character free associates clues to a mystery, trying to figure out the next step in his journey, where in I was not sure if I should be laughing at him or the screenwriters). No, what broke the bank finally, and sent me fumbling through my pockets for the standard issue film critic's cyanide capsule, was a scene involving the ever-waning Jon Voight and an armed patrol boat on a river near Mt. Vernon in Maryland. Voight's character is posing as a fisherman and the patrol boat is maintaining a perimeter around the president's birthday party at nearby Mt. Vernon. The boat pulls up to Voight and a guard, equipped with a machine gun, asks him to move because he is violating their perimeter. " Are you aware, son," Voigt begins, "That I am afforded the right, under the constitution of Maryland to be on a public river?" The soldier responds, "Are you aware, sir, that I can hold you for forty-eight hours without cause?" At which point the Voigt character fumbles to his feet, hemming and hawing comically and turns around to motor back up river. That's it? No comment on the part of the film makers? No outrage from the audience? Blatant abuse of power as throw away gag, like a pie in the face or rain storm on a clear day? Ho-ho-ho! Fascism and breech of civil rights are SUCH a gas! Particularly as told by clumsy and unpleasant Nicholas Cage movies.
|
