There's a comfortable, cozy feeling about knowing that everything you expect to happen does happen.
The movie reminds us of the escapades in "Dr. No," with all the ventilator shafts in all the buildings of the world big enough for a man to crawl through. But the filmmakers do up everything with a perfectly straight face, the way the producers of the early Bonds did it, and the action comes off as both thrilling and amusing.
Although viewers will never mistake "National Treasure" for "Raiders of the Lost Ark," it can provide a few good hours of pure escapist fun. There is absolutely zero believability involved (like there are practically no guards at any of the national monuments or historical sites, and the heroes and villains can basically come and go as they please). But it's no matter. For the confirmed popcorn-flick fanatic, that's the way it's got to be. The movie has cliff-hangers and hairbreadth escapes galore and good humor throughout. In all, it's a lively ride.
Video:
As in Disney's first transfer of this movie, which seems to be identical, the video is very good. The Disney engineers present the film in its original 2.35:1 theatrical scope, measuring out at about a 2.23:1 anamorphic ratio across my widescreen Sony HD television, with its small degree of overscan. A reasonably high bit rate ensures that black levels are solid, white levels are clean, and colors are bright and deep. Object delineation is fairly sharp, moiré effects are at a minimum, and grain is minimal. There is maybe a slight glassiness about the image, and one can notice signs of minor edge enhancement watching close up, but it's hardly anything to complain about.
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 takes cares of the audio, and it, too, is quite good. One hears immediately the strong dynamic contrasts, the impact, the stereo spread, and the well-defined if not terribly deep bass response. The DD soundtrack renders the surround sound well, although most of the noises appear to come from the rear and little from the sides. Nonetheless, there are persuasive sounds you can find in the back speakers of creaking old ships, gunshots, multiple helicopter flyovers (this IS an action adventure, after all), groaning staircases, and the like.
Extras:
The first disc in this 2-Disc Collector's Edition contains mostly the same bonus items as on the earlier single-disc edition, with some new preliminary material and the addition of a Spanish language track. As before, to tie all of the extras in with the movie, there is a multilevel treasure hunt you can play while watching them. On the Main Menu are four initial items: (1) An eleven-minute featurette, "National Treasure on Location," that takes you behind the scenes and into some of the location shooting; for instance, Utah filled in for the Arctic sequence. (2) Two deleted scenes, totaling over seven minutes, with an optional director's commentary; they are "Thomas and the President" and an "Extended Shaft Sequence." (3) A two-minute opening-scene animatic, again with an optional director's commentary, wherein Turteltaub explains that they created a CGI routine to give the filmmakers an idea of what a proposed, but never used, opening sequence might look like. And (4) an almost two-minute alternate ending, also with an optional director's commentary.
Now, here's the thing. If you play through the main four extras, the disc rewards you with clues to revealing the final four bonuses. However, if you don't like playing games, you can always cheat, look at the informational chapter insert, and go straight to many of the "hidden" bonuses. Among these extra extras, you get an eight-minute featurette, "Treasure Hunters Revealed," that uses interviews from and footage of real-life treasure hunters; "Riley's Decode This!" in which our friend Riley presents us with a series of puzzling challenges; and a segment on the history of "The Knights Templar."
The materials on disc one conclude with nineteen scene; Sneak Peeks at seven other Disney titles; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and French and Spanish subtitles, with English captions for the hearing impaired.
Disc two contains more items of interest. First, there are five additional, deleted scenes, with intros by director Jon Turteltaub, totaling about seven minutes. Second, there is a featurette called "Ciphers, Codes & Codebreakers," about twelve minutes on a brief history of the subject. Third, there's the featurette "Exploding Charlotte," six minutes on the special effects of the opening scene. Fourth, there is featurette "To Steal a National Treasure," about five minutes. And fifth, there is yet another featurette, "On the Set of American Treasure," six minutes of behind-the-scenes footage.
And that's about it. Since the second disc adds up to only a little over thirty-six minutes of extra material, I could not in all good conscience recommend the new edition to anyone who already owns the older version. On the other hand, if you don't already own the movie but were thinking about buying it, the new edition makes getting it now as good a time as ever.
Parting Thoughts:
Maybe because I had just finished reading "The Da Vinci Code" before watching "National Treasure" and because I foresaw a lot of parallels between the two works, I was eager to see what Bruckheimer and his team would do with essentially the same situations. Yes, I expected a lot more mindless action in "National Treasure," and that's exactly what I got. But I also found the film moved along at such a healthy clip, with no one in the cast seeming to take any of it seriously, that it quickly caught me up in the whole harebrained but warmhearted operation. Give a good popcorn flick a chance, and you can find yourself eating a whole lot of popcorn while passing an enjoyable time.
Although viewers will never mistake "National Treasure" for "Raiders of the Lost Ark," it can provide a few good hours of pure escapist fun. There is absolutely zero believability involved (like there are practically no guards at any of the national monuments or historical sites, and the heroes and villains can basically come and go as they please). But it's no matter. For the confirmed popcorn-flick fanatic, that's the way it's got to be. The movie has cliff-hangers and hairbreadth escapes galore and good humor throughout. In all, it's a lively ride.
Video:
As in Disney's first transfer of this movie, which seems to be identical, the video is very good. The Disney engineers present the film in its original 2.35:1 theatrical scope, measuring out at about a 2.23:1 anamorphic ratio across my widescreen Sony HD television, with its small degree of overscan. A reasonably high bit rate ensures that black levels are solid, white levels are clean, and colors are bright and deep. Object delineation is fairly sharp, moiré effects are at a minimum, and grain is minimal. There is maybe a slight glassiness about the image, and one can notice signs of minor edge enhancement watching close up, but it's hardly anything to complain about.
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 takes cares of the audio, and it, too, is quite good. One hears immediately the strong dynamic contrasts, the impact, the stereo spread, and the well-defined if not terribly deep bass response. The DD soundtrack renders the surround sound well, although most of the noises appear to come from the rear and little from the sides. Nonetheless, there are persuasive sounds you can find in the back speakers of creaking old ships, gunshots, multiple helicopter flyovers (this IS an action adventure, after all), groaning staircases, and the like.
Extras:
The first disc in this 2-Disc Collector's Edition contains mostly the same bonus items as on the earlier single-disc edition, with some new preliminary material and the addition of a Spanish language track. As before, to tie all of the extras in with the movie, there is a multilevel treasure hunt you can play while watching them. On the Main Menu are four initial items: (1) An eleven-minute featurette, "National Treasure on Location," that takes you behind the scenes and into some of the location shooting; for instance, Utah filled in for the Arctic sequence. (2) Two deleted scenes, totaling over seven minutes, with an optional director's commentary; they are "Thomas and the President" and an "Extended Shaft Sequence." (3) A two-minute opening-scene animatic, again with an optional director's commentary, wherein Turteltaub explains that they created a CGI routine to give the filmmakers an idea of what a proposed, but never used, opening sequence might look like. And (4) an almost two-minute alternate ending, also with an optional director's commentary.
Now, here's the thing. If you play through the main four extras, the disc rewards you with clues to revealing the final four bonuses. However, if you don't like playing games, you can always cheat, look at the informational chapter insert, and go straight to many of the "hidden" bonuses. Among these extra extras, you get an eight-minute featurette, "Treasure Hunters Revealed," that uses interviews from and footage of real-life treasure hunters; "Riley's Decode This!" in which our friend Riley presents us with a series of puzzling challenges; and a segment on the history of "The Knights Templar."
The materials on disc one conclude with nineteen scene; Sneak Peeks at seven other Disney titles; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and French and Spanish subtitles, with English captions for the hearing impaired.
Disc two contains more items of interest. First, there are five additional, deleted scenes, with intros by director Jon Turteltaub, totaling about seven minutes. Second, there is a featurette called "Ciphers, Codes & Codebreakers," about twelve minutes on a brief history of the subject. Third, there's the featurette "Exploding Charlotte," six minutes on the special effects of the opening scene. Fourth, there is featurette "To Steal a National Treasure," about five minutes. And fifth, there is yet another featurette, "On the Set of American Treasure," six minutes of behind-the-scenes footage.
And that's about it. Since the second disc adds up to only a little over thirty-six minutes of extra material, I could not in all good conscience recommend the new edition to anyone who already owns the older version. On the other hand, if you don't already own the movie but were thinking about buying it, the new edition makes getting it now as good a time as ever.
Parting Thoughts:
Maybe because I had just finished reading "The Da Vinci Code" before watching "National Treasure" and because I foresaw a lot of parallels between the two works, I was eager to see what Bruckheimer and his team would do with essentially the same situations. Yes, I expected a lot more mindless action in "National Treasure," and that's exactly what I got. But I also found the film moved along at such a healthy clip, with no one in the cast seeming to take any of it seriously, that it quickly caught me up in the whole harebrained but warmhearted operation. Give a good popcorn flick a chance, and you can find yourself eating a whole lot of popcorn while passing an enjoyable time.
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[release]22354[/release]