National Treasure review
May 12, 2008|
A mark down Russell and Carpenter, actor Justin Bartha and director Jon Turteltaub have recorded a yakker for the
Country-wide Treasure
BD, though they feel to be operating less than the assumption that their commentary is destined for a remastered DVD. (Turteltaub laments the misplacement of a subtitle identifying "Philadelphia" on the '05 disc, a boob that is rectified here.) I kind of enjoyed this track, recorded some dilly-dally after the sequel's termination and fixated on setting nitpickers straight. Bartha, whose offscreen persona is consistent with that of his convert ego, talks Turteltaub into some interesting sidebars (we learn that he went to exuberant school with Nicolas Cage), while Turteltaub is personal property at pressing the actor's buttons for maximum comic sense, as in a discussion of Bartha's so-called equivalence to Ethan Hawke. Their beau lives are perhaps discussed foot too much for Disney's comfort, but the couple gets down to brass tacks more often than not; for what it's worth, this is the in the first place time I can recall hearing of a skin getting longer as a happen of the test-screening alter–a interest of Bartha's performance was rescued from the acrimonious-room storey after preview audiences responded favourably to his courage. The other Blu-ray-exclusives are the Java-enabled trivia scent and "Mission History: Inside The Proclamation of Independence", an interactive feature hosted by "Riley Poole" with options to 'decode' or 'navigate' the eponymous record–the latter bringing up a playlist for a healthy number of historical featurettes tastefully-produced in HiDef. Both should supplication to unforeseeable curriculum vitae geeks and/or people who enjoy waiting recompense things. The remaining extras previously appeared on DVD, supposing the platter represents a valued upgrade in the video department: the 2.35:1, 1080p transfer is entirely away of the DNR that plagued the film in pole-def and incredible besides, boasting stable and aesthetically-pleasing cereal, superfine detail, and a broad, deep greyscale. The DD 5.1 audio is virtually identical to what you hear on DVD in spite of a slightly improved bitrate–can't influence for the PCM uncompressed option, alas. HD trailers for the benefit of
Wall-E
and
National Prize: Book of Secrets
cue up on startup.
-
2.35:1, 1080p (MPEG-4); English PCM 5.1, English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1, Spanish DD 5.1; BD-50
2.35:1 DVD grab:
Gone in Sixty Seconds
GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS
(2000)
* (out of four)
Image
A
Sound
A
Extras
C
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Back when I first screened Dominic Sena's beer commercial without the beer
Gone in Sixty Seconds
, an usher excitedly chatted up the movie to me ahead of the lights went down. "Nicolas Cage is so cool!" he said. "The cars–do you like cars? The cars are amazing. And there's hardly any swearing. Oh, man, a Shelby? Is that the name of it? A GT? The Mustang, it's just, like… If you're a car guy, you're gonna be, like, amazed."
Hardly any swearing?!
I thought, quite aloud. A lousy film but an outstanding illustration of the MPAA's myopic literalmindedness increasing a movie's bad-taste quotient by forcing the suppression of expletives, this bloated remake of Toby Halicki's 1974 underground sensation fetishizes its supporting cast of automobiles to the exclusion of anything resembling a moral objective. The novel isn't definitely Plato, of speed, but back then a auto run after usually stood for a rebellion against the the administration, and that's scrupulously how one would define insurance investigator Maindrian Pace's excuse of the police officers in a stolen vehicle across state lines; a cigar is just a cigar in the remake, in spite of the ludicrous, if funny, suggestion that Cage's "Memphis" Raines drives fast
selflessly
–that is, to keep an unaccountably psychotic skinhead (Christopher Eccleston) from executing Ma Raines' other son, Kip (Giovanni Ribisi, in full greaseball mode). In other words, Sena's account is the
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
swimsuit edition to Halicki's
PLAYBOY
: it's no "safer" (the only thing the bikinis do is turn the ogling of women into an all-ages sport), it very recently has less probity. The situation sadly doesn't recuperate with Touchstone's novel-to-DVD "Director's Cut" of the film, which, aside from restoring a masturbation monologue shamelessly filched from James Mangold's
Heavy
, preserves a wholesome glimmer that's as uninspired as it is insulting.
Of course, the real auteur of the film is producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a dated, hagiographic interview with whom is recycled, in the mood for almost all of the disc's supervenient material, from the prior to DVD deliverance of
Gone in Sixty Seconds
. "Conversations with Jerry Bruckheimer" (8 mins.) joins a main body text-based biography and filmography for the Selznick of gay porn, a remarkably broad distillation of the exact replica into a tick-sustained montage ("Affray Overload"), and a trio of vacuous mini-docs–"L.A. Streets" (5 mins.), "Naval Yard" (4 mins.), and "The Big Jump" (3 mins.)–deconstructing the choppy, CGI-heavy set-have a nervous breakdown in which Memphis evades many a badge-wearing pursuer in a hot Shelby. In "0 to 60" (4 mins.), it comes out that
Con Superiority
screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, who honourable might be worse than George Lucas at making up names (one of the two main cops in
Gone in Sixty Seconds
is christened Detective Drycoff), begged onto the cast after getting ruin someone’s superiority of the supposition, though no inseparable so much as alludes to the Halicki film. "Stars on the Move" featurettes focusing on each of the crucial characters and the actors playing them, the video for
The Cult
's "Painted on My Heart," and a on the knuckles that proves Cage did all his own tochis-projection under way round insensible the special features, the film's memorable trailer the serving dish itself. (Trailers for
Dark Water
,
Jingoistic Treasure
, and
The Pacifier
sign up automatically formerly the cardinal menu.) Immaculate is the interview for the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of
Gone in Sixty Seconds
proper, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is as aggro as you'd look forward inasmuch as a picture that leaves a residuum of testosterone in its wake. Strange, even so, that the concurrent reissue of the staggeringly bad
Coyote Noisome
was outfitted with a DTS privilege while this, the more explosive of the two Bruckheimer productions, was not.
-
Operation Speedily
127 minutes
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 JUST, 16×9-enhanced;
Languages
English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1;
CC
Yes;
Subtitles
French, Spanish; DVD-9; Region One; Yardstick
How's this suitable a barometer of the national cinematic weather?
Public Ideal
is going to get more praise than condemnation from me because it isn't homophobic, misogynistic, or blatantly misanthropic. All it is, undeniably, is astonishingly boring, terribly subnormal, and, it bears repeating, tiring. It's boring. (Also ill-advised.) Essentially the film is a Strong Boys escapade where cryptic clues have our adventurous boy scouts traversing America's historic landmarks on a scavenger hunt on two hours and change. Where the knight is a misunderstood scholar, his sidekick is a computer nerd, and his girlfriend's recreation is retelling because narrative is cool. (The sequel require indubitably touch on spelling, perhaps arithmetic–be still my beating humanitarianism.) And where inspiration runs in view a smidgin during the course of half-an-hour into the runtime, causing
National Treasure
to resort to recycling the despite the fact rising and falling in action finished and more than into–and our film's history buffs when one pleases appreciate this–what seems an boundlessness.
Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) is the golly gee-whiz hero, introduced to us as a young boy (Hunter Gomez) rifling through grandpa's (Christopher Plummer) attic when he comes upon some doodad or other that leads to golden-lit Backstory. Seems that Ben's the last in a line of Gates men entrusted with the secret of the treasure of the Knights Templar (the Freemasons). As a grown man, Ben believes that a treasure map is written in invisible ink (yes, lemons and a candle will crack the caper!) on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Along the way, he earns the enmity of treasure hunter Ian Howe (Sean Bean) and the affection of gorgeous dork Abigail Chase (Diane "Helen of Troy" Kruger). Lots of action and explosions unfold at the pace of old people shuffling through a buffet line, split up by really idiotic and mostly identical sequences in which wordy riddles lead our heroes on yet another series of lever-pullings and allegedly tense standoffs in cobwebbed corridors.
National Treasure
isn't offensive so much as it's garden-variety asinine, which actually makes it sort of bad in a nostalgic way. The only reason it's not a summer release is because it's paced like
Cold Mountain
and features Cage with his acting switch turned from "hopped up on goofballs" to "somnambulant." It's the grown-up version of
The Goonies
, and by "grown-up" I mean the 18-34 year-old demographic that studios target when they produce loud and shiny entertainments featuring a blonde in a black dress running down a street. It's possible to say something about how
National Treasure
gratifies the basest nationalistic instincts of our media-fed culture, but it does that already with an almost complete lack of guile. The film is a travel brochure for the last few percentage points of people who still want to move to the United States (probably as the only remaining guarantee–and not a sound one at that–that the United States won't invade them) and a release of some kind for audiences who still shake their heads in admiration at the wild adventures of Ward Cleaver, or the mad exploits of Encyclopedia Brown.
-
Walter Chaw
2.40:1 DVD nick:
State Treasure
Touchstone presents
National Treasure
on DVD in a 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer.* The image has unfortunately been subjected to too much filtering, à la
The Alamo
and
Hidalgo
(both also from Touchstone). Worse, to make up for that, the telecine operators have liberally applied edge-enhancement, further obscuring fine detail and giving a jagged appearance to diagonal lines. It actually doesn't look as bad as
The Alamo
, maybe because colour and contrast are spot-on. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, on the other hand, is near-demo material; the film's busy mix never collapses into mud, and the use of the rear discretes is particularly arresting during the bookend set-pieces. Bonus material seems in short supply at first until you begin decoding the disc's stupid Easter-egg brainteasers. "
National Treasure
On Location" (11 mins.) finds über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer talking up his first collaboration with Jon Turteltaub–whose great secret to directing is, I quote, "Show up every morning"–as though this were some long-awaited meeting of the minds. Much like the film itself, a lot of sound and fury here signifies nothing, though we do learn that CGI was used to enlarge a shaft. Heheheh. (Aside: the lazy trend of blurring out incidental faces and graphical ephemera caught on tape is getting ridiculous. Can we go back to release forms before we have to start shooting B-roll in front of a greenscreen?)
Turteltaub additionally offers a video introduction and optional commentary for two "Deleted Scenes," though he doesn't have much to say after revealing that the film's rough cut had a running time of over four hours. More interesting than either the elided passage revolving around Andrew Jackson or the extended climax is the "Opening Scene Animatic" (3 mins., and again outfitted with an intro and commentary from Turteltaub), if for no other reason than that it clears up the mystery of why the film's through-the-ages prologue is incoherent but visceral where the rest of
National Treasure
is incoherent and bland. (In the spirit of code-breaking, let's just say that somebody very different from Turteltaub whose name starts with "M" and ends with "Arcus Nispel" directed it.) While I was tempted not to bother trying to unlock the remaining extras, the truth is that a monkey could figure out how to access them with little exertion. I am living proof. Still, you don't get much for the fruits of your minimal labour–just a piece on real-life scavengers ("Treasure Hunters Revealed" (9 mins.)), a set-top cryptology game that begins with an interesting anecdote about the Rosetta Stone ("Riley Poole's Decode This!"), a recapitulation of the unreliable history lesson that kicks off the film ("The Templar Knights" (5 mins.)), a section promoting
National Treasure
tie-in products from Verizon, a trivia track, and a text-based table of contents that, believe it or not, is the hidden supplement for which you have to jump through the most hoops. Trailers for
Herbie: Fully Loaded
,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
,
Tarzan II
, and
The Pacifier
precede the main menu and round out the platter.
-
Bill Chambers
*
Also at one’s disposal in fullscreen.
© Film Freak Important; filmfreakcentral.trap. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express give in to of its author.
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DVD
GRADES
:
Image
B
Wise
A
Extras
C+
DVD
VITALS:
Running Forthwith
131 minutes
MPAA
PG
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.40:1 ONLY, 16×9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
French DD 5.1
CC
Yes
Subtitles
French, Spanish
DVD-9
District One
Disney
Buy the SUBJECT TREASURE placard at
Moviegoods
(click on image)
Buy the GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS poster at
Moviegoods
(click on image)
NATIVE DARLING
Original Motion Exact replica Soundtrack CD
Buy at
Amazon Canada
What's coming out on DVD? Check the
release calendar
AUTEUR'S CORNER
also by Jon Turteltaub
P
ublished: June 8, 2005