Reviewing - The 'Other' Treasure Hunters
Indiana Jones. Rick O'Connell. Jack Sparrow. Some of the biggest names in treasure hunting history have made their mark on cinema...and then there are the other guys. They follow the same path charted out by our bigger characters, but they just can't seem to measure up. Here are the runner-ups of the temple-running curse-breaking genre.
National Treasure (**)
In which Nicolas Cage tells an incredibly intelligent woman to shut up multiple times despite the fact that she's saying completely reasonable things
I’m beginning to think that no one but Indiana Jones can pull off a treasure hunt.
Nicholas Cage has developed quite a reputation for himself as an actor. He’s known for over-performing and pushing his characters to extreme limits; at times, this works, and in other situations, it doesn’t. In the case of National Treasure, I think the casting director got this all wrong. Nicholas Cage cannot compete with the standard action hero. Think of Harrison Ford’s archaeologist Indiana Jones or Chris Pratt’s dinosaur trainer Owen Grady. Heck, take Brendan Fraser’s mummy-hunting Rick O’Connell. They’ve all got some key commonalities. They’re tough, capable, intelligent, lady-pleasing, and they’ve got a bit of an attitude. I’d say Cage’s character really only checks off the “intelligent” and “bit of an attitude” box. He’s not the kind of guy that damsels in distress would pray for. If Harrison Ford is the ‘hot professor’, Cage is your actual professor who does little apart from boring you most of the time and annoying you the rest of the time.
And while we’re on the whole ‘attitude’ thing, Cage is a far cry from what you’d call a politically correct action hero. There’s a scene where the leading lady Abigail is protesting at some of the specifics of Ben Gates’ plan, and he tells her three times in three different ways to just shut up. And then later on when one of the bad guys is talking about Abigail, he mentions how “she won’t shut up”, provoking a knowing smile from Gates. What the heck is going on here? If you’re trying to make her out to be a helpless damsel in distress, then don’t make her a level-headed and realistic DOCTOR who can actually hold her own at multiple points in this movie. If you’re trying to make her a competent heroine, then don’t have everyone complaining about how she “talks too much”. You can’t have it both ways, and honestly that whole bit felt incredibly sexist to me. She wasn’t saying anything that any sane person wouldn’t say. Let her speak, for Pete’s sake! On top of all that, I didn’t believe any of the romantic tension between Gates and Abigail – to be honest, I wondered if any was even possible. Gates certainly didn’t do much to win her affections.
It was kind of interesting that this was a distinctly American treasure film. Other treasure movies take us to Ancient Egypt or other such exotic locales, but this story starts and ends in the good old U. S. of A. I for one liked that they tried to make a believable ancient treasure hunt in the States – the only drawback is that the settings were often not very exciting. We got to see a frozen boat and a treasure cave, but most of the other locations were city streets and modern museums. That kind of arena is great for an action film, but for an adventuring treasure hunt, it’s a bit lacklustre.
This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but there’s not one thing about this film that I find particularly memorable. Well, apart from Nicholas Cage saying “I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence”, I suppose. Apart from those two seconds, this is a thoroughly skippable movie.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (*1/2)
In which Nicolas Cage does not hold a torch once
Why would you make a poster where Nicholas Cage is holding a torch if he NEVER ACTUALLY HOLDS A TORCH in this movie?!
That may not sound like a big deal, but here’s why it IS. When you think of a treasure hunting movie, a fairly common trope is one where the adventurer is walking slowly through some sort of dark cave or ancient temple, looking at the intricate carvings or paintings on the wall and trying to figure out which hallway to move down next. They do not do this with flashlights – they do it with torches, because torches are way cooler. You can’t do a treasure hunt without a torch. The guys making the poster for this film knew that, but the filmmakers themselves clearly did not.
So there’s a book that the President keeps all of his favourite secrets in, and Nicholas Cage needs to get it in order to prove his family’s innocence or something. Sure, fine, whatever. There’s nothing that terrible about this movie – that’s not the problem. There’s just nothing that’s that great. The movie initially leads you to believe that the bad guy has some sort of wicked vendetta against the Gates family. Maybe he’s part of a secret organization, or maybe he’s trying to cover up a government secret. Both of these would have been preferable storylines to the real one: he’s just some guy who wants to find some treasure. And when he finally finds it, he sacrifices his own life to save everyone else – the same people who he threatened to kill moments ago. How does that make sense? And if a guy who almost ruined your family name and who threatened to kill your girlfriend then asked you to do him a posthumous favour and give him credit for the finding of the treasure that YOU found, would you do it? I wouldn’t! Sure, I don’t mind telling everyone that he played a role in the story, but it was a BAD role. I’m not gonna lie and tell everyone that he was a good guy when he wasn’t.
Last thing and then I’ll quit for the day. They did that annoying thing where the main couple breaks up off-screen in between movies in order to give us a little bit of added dramatic tension. Why do people do that? I hate that.
This was not worth it. Please don’t waste your time.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (*)
In which an eccentric adventuring heiress does bungee aerobics and fights robots in a mansion to pass the time
I should’ve left this Matrix-wannabe in its grave.
I love treasure hunts, though I have to admit that up to this point I’ve been largely disappointed with every cinematic treasure hunter I’ve come across apart from Indiana Jones. When I decided to give Lara Croft a shot, it was partly out of familiarity - I had heard of the video games and played the 2013 remake - but also partly because she was the only other big name in treasure hunting that I knew of. And if I can be honest, it’s really the aesthetic of treasure hunts that I enjoy more than the narrative. Watching people with torches crawl through ancient skeleton-filled tunnels is what it’s all about. So I gave this movie a shot in the hopes that I’d get some of that.
Well, in the first minute, I was disappointed. Lara Croft fights a robot. Why are there robots? I’m here for mummies, zombies, or otherwise-undead cursed monsters of some sort. Maybe a long lost tribe or a rival treasure hunting team, but that’s the farthest I’ll stretch. Robots are not what I’m looking for.
Secondly, it became very apparent to me that the filmmakers were trying to capitalize on the popularity of The Matrix, which had captured the imaginations of the general public just two years earlier. I know Lara’s been doing the dual pistol thing since long before Neo, but when you add in the slow-motion, the 90s-drum-fueled action soundtrack, and throw in a touch of hacking...it’s kind of evident that you’re drawing from a much more significant movie. Later on in the film, Lara sports what is essentially a colour-swapped version of Trinity’s outfit: undone leather coat that hangs to the ankles, tight unitard-kind-of-thing underneath, and small sunglasses. In The Matrix, they made it work. Here, it’s a bit much.
Lastly, I found myself having to read a summary of the plot while watching the movie in order to remember what was going on. I was just thoroughly bored the whole way through, with the exception of the TWO scenes that actually happen in ancient temples. Like, why does Lara have a bungee swing in the middle of her house? That was so weird. And I get that sex appeal was likely a major marketing factor for this film, but the amount of time we spent watching people shower or emerge from showers was nothing short of remarkable. I’m here for TOMB RAIDING, people. Let’s get to the real stuff, please.
Oh, and Benjamin Gates’ dad from National Treasure is in this movie as a different treasure hunter’s father. That was a neat piece of trivia that I will likely carry to the grave.
Tomb Raider (**)
In which a loving father continually looks for ways to get away from his only child
Lara’s reboot fails at the one thing it was supposed to do – make Tomb Raider relevant.
I actually saw this film BEFORE I saw the Angelina Jolie movies, and before ever playing a Tomb Raider game. This flick was my formal introduction to the franchise, for better or worse. To be honest, I didn’t hate watching this in theatres, but it’s one of those movies that doesn’t last any longer than the amount of time it takes to watch it. It was fun for a summer evening, but that’s it. The action is fine, and there’s a healthy amount of running through the jungle and solving puzzles, but there’s also a pointless chase through London and a sequence where a backpack is stolen for arbitrary reasons. There’s just too many scenes that are totally unimportant to the plot.
Alicia Vikander definitely carried the film in terms of her athletic prowess, although I think the script she was given didn’t really give us much opportunity to root for her. She doesn’t really crack jokes, and she doesn’t make any profound decisions for us to strongly support or disagree with. Her relationship with her father is based entirely off of flashbacks, and I don’t think there’s anything particularly emotional there. Summed up, she just isn’t an exciting protagonist – though I don’t blame Vikander. To her credit, she made the physical pain and struggle of the character believable. She’s just not memorable or likable otherwise.
If you want to see a woman search for a lost tomb, this movie will provide that. And literally nothing else.