Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
National Treasure: From Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, comes the definitive NATIONAL TREASURE. Get closer to the edge of your seat with the 2-Disc Collector's Edition Blu-ray of this thrilling adventure starring Academy Award(R) Winners Jon Voight (Best Actor, COMING HOME, 1978) and Nicolas Cage (Best Actor, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, 1995) as Benjamin Franklin Gates. Since boyhood, Gates has been obsessed with finding the legendary Knights Templar Treasure, the greatest fortune known to man. As he tries to find and decipher ancient riddles that will lead him to it, Gates is dogged by a ruthless enemy (Sean Bean, THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy). Now in a race against time, Gates must steal one of America's most sacred and guarded documents -- the Declaration of Independence -- or let it, and a key clue to the mystery, fall into dangerous hands. Heart-pounding chases, close calls and the FBI turn Gates' quest into a high-stakes crime caper and the most exciting treasure hunt you've ever experienced, now with a treasure trove of new special features
National Tresure 2- Book of Secrets:
Join Nicolas Cage on a heart-pounding adventure that will have you on the edge of your seat in a race to find the Lost City of Gold. Grounded in history, imbued with myth and mystery, Disney's NATIONAL TREASURE 2: BOOK OF SECRETS takes you on a globe-trotting quest full of adrenaline-pumping twists and turns -- all leading to the final clue in a mysterious and highly guarded book containing centuries of secrets. But there's only one way to find it -- Ben Gates must kidnap the President. Packed with fast-paced action and crackling humor, NATIONAL TREASURE 2: BOOK OF SECRETS is a movie your entire family will want to rediscover again and again

Amazon.com:
Amazon.com Review for National Treasure
Like a Hardy Boys mystery on steroids, National Treasure offers popcorn thrills and enough boyish charm to overcome its rampant silliness. Although it was roundly criticized as a poor man's rip-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Da Vinci Code, it's entertaining on its own ludicrous terms, and Nicolas Cage proves once again that one actor's infectious enthusiasm can compensate for a multitude of movie sins. The contrived plot involves Cage's present-day quest for the ancient treasure of the Knights Templar, kept secret through the ages by Freemasons past and present. Finding the treasure requires the theft of the Declaration of Independence (there are crucial treasure clues on the back, of course!), so you can add "caper comedy" to this Jerry Bruckheimer production's multi-genre appeal. Nobody will ever accuse director Jon Turtletaub of artistic ambition, but you've got to admit he serves up an enjoyable dose of PG-rated entertainment, full of musty clues, skeletons, deep tunnels, and harmless adventure in the old-school tradition. It's a load of hokum, but it's fun hokum, and that makes all the difference. --Jeff Shannon

Amazon.com Review for National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Less engrossing than its 2004 predecessor National Treasure, Jon Turteltaub’s busy sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets is nevertheless a colorful and witty adventure, another race against overwhelming odds for the answer to a historical riddle. Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage), the treasure hunter who feverishly sought, in the first film, the whereabouts of a war chest hidden by America’s forefathers, is now charged with protecting family honor. When a rival (Ed Harris) offers alleged proof that Gates’ ancestor, Thomas Gates, was not a Civil War-era hero but a participant in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Ben and his father (Jon Voight) and crew (Justin Bartha, Diane Kruger) hopscotch through Paris, London, Washington DC, and South Dakota to gather evidence refuting the claim. The film is most fun when the hunt, as in National Treasure, squeezes Ben into such impossible situations as examining twin desks in the queen’s chambers in Buckingham Palace and the White House’s Oval Office, or kidnapping an American president (Bruce Greenwood) for a few minutes of frank talk. Helen Mirren, the previous year's Oscar winner for Best Actress, wisely joins the cast of a likely hit film as Ben’s archaeologist mother, long-estranged from Voight’s character but as feisty as the rest of the family. Returning director Turteltaub takes excellent advantage of his colorful backdrops in European capitals and the always-eerie Mount Rushmore, and oversees some wildly imaginative sets for this dramedy’s feverish third act in an audacious and completely unexpected, legendary setting. If National Treasure: Book of Secrets doesn’t feel quite as crisp and unique as its predecessor, it is still ingenious and wry enough to laugh a bit at itself. --Tom Keogh

Stills from National Treasure: Book of Secrets (click for larger image)

Rating : - Better than the original
Our kids were never good at history and were this-close to flunking out of the top private schools that we had found them places in. History was like poison to them. For right or wrong their generation doesn't believe in anything that took place before, say, French situationalism. Ask them about the Beatles, they'll look absolutely blankly at you. When the headmaster called me four years ago, threatening to dropkick my oldest son Brandon right out of school if his history grades did not improve, I was at the door of despair. Then happily Nicolas Cage saved the day by releasing NATIONAL TREASURE part one, and my kids got hooked on history. They don't know who Nicolas Cage is, in fact I don't think they believe he is an actor, they think he is Ben Gates the "history guy."

They also like his father, played by Jon Voight, and now they have a new hero, Helen Mirren's Egyptologist character who proves just as brave and plucky as her son and estranged husband.

Before Part Two I had no idea that there was an actual Book of Secrets that all American Presidents are forced to read and hide! But I have since been assured that all of it is true.

It is funny that Hollywood producers, who would as we all know sell out their own grandmothers, have now made two pictures in a row in which "family honor" is the prime motivating factor. Not only do the Gates family feel stung when it is "proven" that their ancestor helped assassinate Lincoln, but Ed Harris is similarly suffering from the disgrace of bad blood. It's not exactly convincing, and the actors don't really play it out very well, but hey, it got my kids interested in Lincoln and in Dr, Samuel Mudd, the man after whom, as Nicolas Cage explains, we got the common expression, "His Name Is Mudd." Long ago, director John Ford shot the excellent biopic "The Prisoner of Shark Island" about this very same case, and my kids seem to love it. They have recently asked me if they could become members of the American Cinematheque and get seasons tickets to the Cinematheque's current program of screening every one of John Ford's films.

I liked seeing Jon Voight and Helen Mirren play off of each other like the Nick and Nora of history. In actuality, both Voight and Mirren had something in common, each had made a seminal film with the British auteur John Boorman, DELIVERANCE for Voight and EXCALIBUR for Mirren. Something of Boorman's shadowy, erratic glow hovers over all the Voight-Mirren sequences in the film, far outclassing the Cage-Kruger affair, for which I did not care a whit, though Brandon has recently left Princeton to try to track down Diane Kruger and ask her about how to become a topnotch expert in forensics analysis, as he believes her to be. Finally, the real-life Book of Secrets, now owned by President Bush, tells the whole story about Area 51 and how Eisenhower was brought there in a secret plane and shook hands and played cards with two dying aliens before they died, and other stories we thought were tall tales were true, just like the legendary city of gold under Mount Rushmore.