jamesq | Irrational Pleasure

The

evilscientist and I went to see National Treasure yesterday. It was good cheesy fun. An action adventure story that was halfway intelligent (if you didn't look at it too closely) with some believable yet still thrilling action set pieces.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for awhile now - movies where the action set pieces are so unbelievable as to break your suspension of disbelief. Each new James Bond movie has been a little worse then the last because of this. In terms of ability, Brosnan's Bond from Die Another Day is a mutant super-hero when compared to Connery's Bond from Dr. No. A few movies of late have done this. The Bruce was describing a scene from Van Helsing that had him wanting to yell "Oh come on!" at the television. There were some scenes in the trailer for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle that had me doing the same.

Which is not to say that an unbelievable action set piece can't also be entertaining - the finale of Mission: Impossible (the helicopter in the Chunnel sequence) is completely unbelievable - but also enjoyable. I think the difference is whether or not you identify with the character's who are in peril and if the direction/cinematography make the scene feel real.

Bad special effects contribute to this. I hated the web-slinging scenes in the original Spider-Man movie because the physics model for the CGI wasn't good enough. I liked similar scenes in Spider-Man 2. Note, the CGI wasn't my sole reason for disliking Spider-Man.

Which brings me to National Treasure. As I said, the action scenes are both believable and thrilling. Case in point. Diane Kruger is hanging from the open back door of a moving van and Nicolas Cage reaches out from another van to rescue her. Now there is only one way this scene can end (hint, the romantic lead does not hit the pavement at 80 KPH), but it's still an exciting sequence and way better than anything in, say, the laughable Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Why? It's tightly filmed; we have gotten to know Ben Gates and Abigail Chase as characters - and they're likable; the situation is not implausible - you could imagine yourself pulling off this scenario with a little luck.

So the action was good. I've also mentioned the characters being likable. The four main characters (Riley Poole, the sidekick and Ian Howe, the villian) seem real. For example, Gates' patriotism and passion are not forced but are still core. You want the characters to succeed. Abigale Chase is the plucky romantic lead. You believe that she can fall for Ben Gates because he is, at heart, a noble person, and you see that she can sense that. Riley Poole gets less development because he is the sidekick, but he plays two useful roles in the movie. First, he's comic releif to break tension (but never by being a buffoon). Second he takes the audience's role of arguing against the insanity of some of our hero's ideas - thus allowing Ben to convince Riley and hence us, of their rightness). Ian Howe is the ultra callous villian - a man who sees everything in terms of his goals and obstacles to be bypassed or eliminated. He never quite becomes sociopathic and he never chews the scenery to the point of becoming a bwa-ha-ha snidely whiplash.

There is also a patina of historical intellectualism. I've heard that this movie rips off The Da Vinci Code - I haven't read it so I couldn't say. Historical conspiracy theories involving the Masons and the Knights Templar are not new. Check out Umberto Eco's novel Foucault’s Pendulum for a particularly dense (but entertaining) take on this sub-genre.

Because it's a movie, it's not so important that the facts in the movie are real. It's much more important that they seem real. You want to keep the fantastical elements because that's your story, but you don't want your audience to be snorting with derision throughout either. The plot then is like the action sequences - keep it exciting, but not unbelievable. Unbelievable is not the same as unrealistic in this case. National Treasure is unrealistic, but it is still believable. I wouldn't want to use this movie to pass an American civic's exam, but it may inspire a few people to check out the real history.

So go see it already, unless you haven't seen The Incredibles yet. In that case, go see The Incredibles, then see National Treasure after that's worn off.