Movies - National Treasure

Home > Listing Index > Movies > National Treasure

	Movies - National Treasure

National Treasure is a 2004 movie written by Jim Kouf, Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and directed by Jon Turteltaub. It stars Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel and Christopher Plummer. It is an adventure movie set in the USA about a search for lost treasure, involving stealing the Declaration of Independence, which leads to a trail intertwined with the Knights Templar, the Masons, and has many similar plot elements as The Da Vinci Code. ;Tagline : The greatest adventure history has ever revealed.

According to Box Office Mojo.com, with a "production budget" of $100 million and release in 3,243 theaters, National Treasure went on to have an "opening weekend domestic" gross of $35,142,554. Overall, National Treasure earned a "domestic total gross" of $173,008,894 (with a "worldwide gross" of $347,451,894), .

Synopsis

Nicholas Cage plays Benjamin Franklin Gates, scion of the Gates family, who, following in the footsteps of his grandfather (Plummer), is protector of the key to a legendary ancient worldwide Knights Templar/Freemasons treasure hidden by Masons during the American Revolution. Hoping to find it, he ventures to the wrecked SS Charlotte, whereupon finding this riddle:

:the legend writ, the stain affected. the key in Silence undetected. fifty-five in iron pen, mr. Matlack can't offend.

He discovers that there might be a map to the treasure on the back of the Declaration of Independence. His friend, Ian Howe, suggests they steal it. Gates says no, and this triggers a race to get the Declaration and find the map. Ben and his sidekick, Riley Poole (Bartha), decide to steal the Declaration in order to keep it out of the hands of the sinister and traitorous Ian (Bean). Along the way, he obtains the assistance of his reluctant father (Voight) and an attractive National Archives archivist, Abigail Chase (Kruger). They are all tracked by FBI agents, led by Agent Sadusky (Keitel). The searchers ultimately discover that the Knights Templar thought that the treasure was too big for one man. There is a strong implication that the Templars believed in democracy, and that one monarch should never hold all the power.

Inspiration and influences

The idea of a large treasure which uses the Declaration of Independence as a clue to its discovery is similar to the story of the Beale ciphers, which (supposedly) were buried in Bedford county, Virginia circa 1820. However, to decode part of that cipher, one simply had to know the text of the Declaration; one did not need the original document itself.

The film also draws upon several real-life pieces of history, including the use by revolutionary American forces of invisible inks to store hidden information in letters and other documents; dictionary codes as a form of cipher; and other intelligence tradecraft of the era.

Trivia

Before the movie was rated PG by the MPAA, it was under the Touchstone Pictures banner (which is part of Disney). When the film received a PG rating, it was then placed under the more family-oriented Walt Disney Pictures
banner.

Sequels

According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), a sequel to National Treasure has been announced and is tentatively being called National Treasure 2
. Its tentative release date is sometime in 2007, though it may not be released until 2008. It is being written by Gregory Poirier.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for National Treasure ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article National Treasure; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Movies - National Treasure

Synopsis

Inspiration and influences

Trivia

Sequels

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay