Putting the "treasure" in the national treasury was not an easy thing to do

This sincerity, more than anything, is what really sets "National Treasure" apart as a Nicolas Cage film. Cage has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, earning critical acclaim for his roles in "Mandy" and "Pig." It's easy to forget that he spent years in the Hollywood wilderness in the 2000s, playing thankless roles in movies like "Next" and "The Wicker Man." Yet Nicholas Cage never really called it. He remains the most memorable part of the rather mundane (if not bad) films not because he played his role for laughs, but because he was always looking for something even when the film around him barely existed. . "National Treasure" stands out from Cage's worst films because its belief in the interesting facts of American history as a national good roughly equates to Cage's commitment to the role.

The same sincerity can't help but date "National Treasure" to the early 2000s. As we know now and did back then, the founders weren't eccentric polymaths hiding treasuries, but wealthy and powerful slave owners who skewed the Constitution in favor of Southern landowners. The very idea of ​​an “American conspiracy” masks an inconvenient truth; that there is no single American story, but rather a snake's nest of historical narratives vying for supremacy over the decades. With that in mind, perhaps the "treasury" of the "National Treasury" is perfectly appropriate. Dig to the root of the American experience and, sure enough, you'll find a room full of hidden money, inherited from the Templars, who probably stole it elsewhere. What else would it be?