Product Description

From Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and Jon Turteltaub, director of PHENOMENON, comes NATIONAL TREASURE. It's the thrilling, edge-of-your-seat adventure starring Academy Award® winner Nicolas Cage (1995 Best Actor, LEAVING LAS VEGAS) as Benjamin Franklin Gates. Ever since he was a boy, Gates has been obsessed with finding the legendary Knights Templar Treasure, the greatest fortune known to man. As Gates tries to find and decipher ancient riddles that will lead him to it, he's dogged by a ruthless enemy (Sean Bean, THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy) who wants the riches for himself. Now in a race against time, Gates must steal one of America's most sacred and guarded documents -- the Declaration of Independence -- or let it, and a key clue to the mystery, fall into dangerous hands. Heart-pounding chases, close calls, and the FBI turn Gates's quest into a high-stakes crime caper and the most exciting treasure hunt you've ever experienced.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1255 in DVD
• Brand: Disney
• Released on: 2005-05-03
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 131 minutes

Amazon.com
Like a Hardy Boys mystery on steroids, National Treasure offers popcorn thrills and enough boyish charm to overcome its rampant silliness. Although it was roundly criticized as a poor man's rip-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Da Vinci Code, it's entertaining on its own ludicrous terms, and Nicolas Cage proves once again that one actor's infectious enthusiasm can compensate for a multitude of movie sins. The contrived plot involves Cage's present-day quest for the ancient treasure of the Knights Templar, kept secret through the ages by Freemasons past and present. Finding the treasure requires the theft of the Declaration of Independence (there are crucial treasure clues on the back, of course!), so you can add "caper comedy" to this Jerry Bruckheimer production's multi-genre appeal. Nobody will ever accuse director Jon Turtletaub of artistic ambition, but you've got to admit he serves up an enjoyable dose of PG-rated entertainment, full of musty clues, skeletons, deep tunnels, and harmless adventure in the old-school tradition. It's a load of hokum, but it's fun hokum, and that makes all the difference. --Jeff Shannon

DVD features
There's a pretty good gimmick with these DVD extras aimed squarely at the pre-teen/early teen audience that ate up this film. Each of the extras (a standard making-of featurette, an alternate ending, and an interesting deleted scene) is followed by a clue afterwards. Decipher the clues and unlock the next set of extras: a nice bit on real treasure hunters, an awful piece on the Knights Templar, and one gem for kids: "Riley Poole's Decode this!" Actor Justin Bartha reprises his role (Nic Cage's techno-sidekick) and lectures a bit on the cooler side of language history and code-breaking with a few simple interactive games. If you get through it all, you unlock a hidden feature, a trivia track. Thankfully, those who do not want to go on the treasure hunt can access these features by reading the printed insert. Also thankfully, director Jon Turteltaub's enthusiasm always makes DVD extras more watchable than most. --Doug Thomas

From The New Yorker
A somewhat entertaining treasure-hunt movie-suspension of disbelief required. Nicolas Cage stars as an explorer out to find some buried riches left behind by the Founding Fathers. The would-be crackling dialogue is damply delivered, but there's fun to be had in the director Jon Turteltaub's constantly shifting monument locations (from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia) and the puzzle-work clues that move the plot. The film is playfully pointless. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Ignore the critics, enjoy the ride
I'm surprised that this movie has attracted so much scorn. Is it silly and far-fetched? Well, duh, anyone could figure that out who's seen only half a trailer! So, if we accept that going in, the only remaining question is does it deliver sufficient entertainment value?

I vote yes.

The far-fetched plot owes a large debt to "The DaVinci Code", which itself owes a large debt to a time-honored history of conspiracy theories. Long before "The DaVinci Code" was published, I'd heard all sorts of whispered tales about the Knights Templar and the Freemasons - usually involving the Holy Grail, though.

But none of that matters. This is a yarn, pure and simple. As such, it's well told with a good mix of likable and villainous characters, plus at least one you're not too sure about. Should you expect a tall tale to stand up under intense scrutiny? Not bloody likely! To keep you from thinking about the incongruities, it has lots of well-paced action.

This is also a family film. I saw it with 8 other family members ranging from preteen school kids to their grandpa (me). Everyone had a good time and everyone figured we got our money's worth.

In Our Day and Age... ****1/2
National Treasure is proof of what us "common" listeners, movie goers, readers and observers have suspected for a long time; That critics are usually wrong/stupid. This movie got bad reviews. Not even bad - abysmal reviews. And do you wanna know why? After everything is said and done, it's because there's no sex, no foul language, and it's entertaining instead of disturbing. Well we can leave them to the business of deciding what our likes and values "should" be, and we they can pontificate why movies they view with disdain end up as year-end blockbusters. With that being said, I feel I should come from a different angle. This movie is also NOT an anti-Christianity film (and I find it interesting that people would equate it as such, seeing as there are so many other mediums that are). The plain and simple facts: pretty much everyone involved in shaping this country: from establishing it, to breaking from England, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence, to the men we've elected as Presidents have been Christians. ALSO, more than half the men that signed the Declaration were Masons. Simple facts. George Washington was a Mason. Ben Franklin was a master mason. Lodges were established pretty much everywhere across the East Coast. There's no way to dispute these things because they happened. Coming to the conclusion that masonry is anti-Christian just shows a lack of knowledge on the subject (especially since most masons are Christian to begin with). This is a completely different topic (something that I wouldn't mind discussing with anyone via e-mail), so onto the movie.

It's well written, interesting, with a cliff-hanger look into history that more than acknowledges Dan Brown. (By the way, Dan Brown's new book is on the same subject as this movie. I'm not sure which is interdependent.) It's well produced, well casted, with very few lagging moments. The story is great and the American historical sights are filmed very well, showing masonic influence in virtually everything our Founding Fathers did. I really don't see how this can be construed as negative. Perhaps critics don't like Disney.

Seeing an early edition DVD of this movie, I can say that the special features are certainly lacking. Putting any type of "history channel" type documentary of the evolution of templars-to-masons would have been nice. Even masonry in American history would have been good. Basically, there's a 5 minute mini-history that covers the same ground as the movie or is common knowledge. Perhaps the "special edition" will have more. The lacking special features pales to the greatness of the movie. One of the best!

Overall: 9 out of 10.

National Treasure
What a great movie that the whole family can watch! I am a history buff, and it was very enjoyable to see this movie incorporate actual events from history into the mystery. The cast was well chosen, and the movie never had a dull moment. The different location shots were chosen, and showcased to intrigue the viewers.