The Hindu Business Line : <I>National Treasure</I> - the fantasy world of treasure hunts

WHEN you have lived long enough in a Mumbai-kind-of-city, a time comes when even entertainment must resemble a train hurtling down the tracks with no room for thought.

Thinking is a strain. Life is far simpler if surrendered to the predictability of suburban tracks. National Treasure is one such film.

About a treasure hunt of rather unbelievable proportions, its protagonists like all good treasure hunters have to pause every now and then to decipher riddles and codes.

All those attempts at sounding scholarly are only secondary to the fast paced ride the film offers, which is what sustains the audience interest.

Out here, you call it time-pass. And National Treasure fits the bill.

Actor Nicholas Cage stars as Benjamin Franklin Gates who has spent his whole life searching for a fortune few believe exists - the Knights Templar Treasure, hidden somewhere in America.

For six generations, his family has chased clues left behind by America's founding fathers and scoured the nation in search of the treasure.

But now Gates has made a breakthrough, he knows that a hint to the treasure's location is there in a hidden map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

With his adversary (Sean Bean) also in the know of the map, Gates must either be the first to steal the precious document or let it fall into dangerous hands.

He teams up with his tech-whiz friend Riley (Justin Bartha) and the National Archives Conservator Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) to - as the film's official hand-out says - "accomplish the unthinkable."

Which it indeed is, given America as final location for a mythical treasure unearthed from King Solomon's temple and the likelihood of invisible messages behind the Declaration of Independence.

Justin Bartha livens up his bit as Riley, the rest are pawns in a grand story. Nicholas Cage is predictable as Gates, the contours of such celluloid characters decided by Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones, the latter a more convincing portrayal of the scholar-adventurer.

Still, Cage battles on like a truck leaving behind as in many of his films, the impression of a good actor in the wrong place.

Quite likely the cheeky thing about National Treasure is that it fills the gap between Dan Brown's `Da Vinci Code' and waiting to see that book made into a film. National Treasure taps motifs like Knights Templar and Masonic Society, but leaves it to a roller-coaster ride to deliver its treasure hunt story.

You feel none of the mystery associated with legends and secret societies.

Makes you wonder if someone was hurrying to beat competition to the marketplace. Which anyway, is what Mumbai rail journeys are all about.

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