I first remember seeing Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona. Among the thoughts I did not have when I first saw Cage is “hey this guy would make a good action movie star”. But someone had that bright idea and Cage has made a number of good movies in the genre including National Treasure.

The Makers of National Treasure and its sequel are long on conspiracy and action and short on anything that would pass for a knowledge of actual history or geography. But if you set aside questions of why a tribe of indigenous people on the east coast of the Americas would hide their city of gold more than a thousand miles from the coast on the land of a completely different people, then National Treasure: Book of Secrets can still deliver some great action scenes. I thought the movie started slower than its predecessor as the film makers needed to undo the wonderful lives that they had created for the main characters at the end of the first movie. The first 15 minutes of the movie just felt forced to me and the movie did not start to hit its pace until the action moves to London and Buckingham Palace.

If you missed this movie in the theaters, that’s not a terrible shame. I enjoyed it but it would probably be a better candidate for adding to your Netflix.com list instead of seeing it on the big screen.