National Treasure always struck me as one of those movies I never actually had to try to see by leaving my house, as I imagined that not too long after theatrical release, it’d be plastered all of premium cable and then a likely home at USA Network or TNT where it would play the round-the-clock slot after they retired Gladiator. I’ve tried watching the film on Starz on a couple of occasions, and it never struck me as either bad enough to be fun or good enough to warrant my genuine interest for 2 hours. Still, I know it made a mint at the box office and it was a Bruckheimer film, so sequels were inevitable. It was just a matter of who they’d rope in to spruce up the joint.
Bruckheimer rarely does anything halfass, tho, so he aimed pretty goddamn high and managed to land Helen "Boy, I sure appreciated the retrospective of your younger, fleshier days at the Oscars" Mirren to play Nicholas Cage’s mom in the fascinatingly-titled sequel National Treasure: The Book of Secrets. Just grabs the attention, don’t it? I suppose this kinda mirrors the Connery move in the third Indiana Jones flick, but I don’t want to insult the grand lady by equating the two. It’s a dubious, if expected post-Oscar move to be sure, but since
Besides, she’ll be in good company as Ed Harris has stepped in to play the villain for part deux, and he’s no stranger to Oscar attention or Bruckheimer films himself. Apparently, the plot in this one involves Cage trying to discover the truth behind the murder of