Starring: Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Diane Kruger, Sean Bean, Justin Bartha
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Studio: Disney
Video: 2.35:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9, 1080p HD
Audio: PCM Uncompressed 5.1, English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1, Spanish DD 5.1
Extras: Alternate Ending, Deleted Scenes, Commentary, Featurettes
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Length: 131 minutes
Rating: ****1/2
National Treasure stars Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Gates, who comes from a family of treasure hunters whose lineage dates back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. According to an old family legend, an ancestor was made privy to the secret of the treasure of the Knights Templar, which was guarded over in later years by the Freemasons and eventually brought to the United States. There, Masons and architects of the American government such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin helped craft a secret code to guarantee the treasure’s survival. Over the ensuing couple of centuries, Gates and his forebears have been made the laughing stock of the historical and archeological academic communities for their insistence on the existence of the treasure and their attempts to find it. Ben Gates, to the consternation of his father (played by Jon Voight), believes in the treasure, and with the assistance of a wealthy English financier, continues to search for clues to the treasure’s whereabouts. When Ben determines that additional clues are hidden in the Declaration of Independence, Ian, the financier (played by Sean Bean), becomes impatient; he makes a really nasty turn as a total bad guy, swearing to steal the Declaration to gain the necessary clues. At this point, the story not only becomes a thrill-ride of a treasure hunt, but also a race to save the most precious document of American history from the bad guys.
As sheer entertainment, it just doesn’t get much better than National Treasure. Not only does the movie craft a truly believable yarn, but the combination of historical/action film/lighthearted comedy makes for truly compelling watching, and the principal actors all give remarkably good performances. The Blu-ray disc betters the DVD release in every possible technical aspect, offering a superb picture that, in my book, blows away the already good DVD. Even with the extensive use of CG images in many sequences, the superior resolution of the Blu-ray disc makes the CG so much more believable than in standard definition, and with a movie this entertaining, it’s so much easier to suspend disbelief anyway! And the addition of the uncompressed 5.1 PCM soundtrack delivers the necessary wallop for the films abundant action sequences.
If there’s anything to quibble about, it would be that that not all the movie’s multitude of bonus materials are presented in high definition, but with a film this entertaining – that looks and sounds as close as possible to reference quality – it’s really hard to complain. Very highly recommended!
— Tom Gibbs
