National Treasure, Book of Secrets, I hate Jerry Bruckheimer. Jerry Bruckheimer has been responsible for some of the worst, most implausible movies in history. Single handed he destroyed the Pirates of the Caribbean series. All it would take is just a little restraint, a bit more plot and a slightly less complex script and we could have had a series that would have lasted for years. Oh no, he had to go over and over the top. Anyway it was with great trepidation that I went to “Book of Secrets”. I was pleasantly surprised for most to the movie, Bruckheimer didn’t direct the move he only produced it but you can still see his smudgy finger prints. Thomas Gates, Ben Gates’, Nicolas Gage, great-great grandfather is approached by John Wilkes Booth and another conspirator in a bar and asked to decipher a “Playfair” cipher. Wilkes leaves to assassinate Lincoln and Thomas Gates translates part of the cipher. Gates deduces that it’s a treasure map and that the Confederate loyalists intend to use the treasure to continue the Civil War. When he refuses to continue he’s threatened with a pistol; the news of the assassination momentarily distracts the thug and Gates throws part of the diary into the fire. Gates is shot and with his dying breath tells his son Charles, “The debt that all men pay”. Spoilers Ahead!

Years later a partially burned fragment of the diary surfaces during Ben Gates’ lecture on Civil War heroes. The fragment implicates Gates’s great-great grandfather as the mastermind of Lincoln’s assassination. Ben Gates sets out to prove otherwise. All sorts of chicanery ensue, the fragment is subjected to spectral imaging, Ben Gates sneaks into Buckingham Palace and for good measure the White House, the book of secrets discovered, etc… It’s a great story and fairly plausible untill they get to Mount Rushmore. A secret chamber, of course, is breached but it’s booby trapped and floods with water. There’s a balance table that NASA and MIT would have trouble fabricating let alone native Americans using vines and tree branches. A never ending flow of water threatens to drown the bunch. But in the end the treasure is retrieved, the Gates’ family name is cleared and Ben kisses and makes up with his estranged wife. His sidekick even gets his Ferrari back from the IRS. “The debt that all men pay” is death. The debt that all movie goers pay is Jerry Bruckheimer’s compulsion to make every story way too complex.