National Treasure: Edge of History Movie Review

Jess (Lizette Oliviera) meets former FBI agent Peter Sadusky (Harvey Keitel), who is dying. He bequeaths to find the treasure of Montezuma, hidden by the women of the Mayan, Aztec and Inca tribes from the Spanish conquerors. The heroine and her friends are trying to find the location of the treasure, but the insidious collector Billy Pierce (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is already on their trail.

Nostalgia for the “good old days” may not be a disease in the strict psychiatric sense, but almost everyone suffers from it to one degree or another. Disney’s premier drug purveyor once again revisits audiences yearning for the good old days and unearths from its 2004 National Treasure collection, a not-so-good but entertaining conspiracy film for the whole family. The story about the seekers of mythical relics gets a new composition of the era of zoomers: if Nicolas Cage in the original films dreamed of stealing the Declaration of Independence of the United States, then the local hybrid teenagers in their 20s are trying to restore the chronology of the emergence of their own country and reach the very essence, the treasures of Montezuma, with indistinct and sometimes uncomfortable results.

Jess did not know her father – he died many years ago and, according to her mother, was an antiques thief, after which she vowed not to allow a similar fate for her child. But the craving for the unknown will inevitably make itself felt: Jess is excellent at solving puzzles, which her comrades admire every minute (everyone would like such validation), which means that she will easily subdue the riddles of the century. There is only one real problem looming on the horizon, which, with proper coverage, could be a great dramatic case: Jess is in the DACA program, which prohibits the deportation of migrants if they arrived in the US before they came of age. Any oversight or interest of the authorities can deprive the girl of a bright future and a dream job in the FBI cryptography department. Thus begins the race against time and “dangerous” thugs led by wealthy Catherine Zeta-Jones in a blonde wig.

By adding references to the teen reality of 2022, At the Edge of History showrunners Marianne and Cormac Wibberley lose all connection with the audience and betray their own, far from young age, reminiscent of a meme with Steve Buscemi and a skateboard. How do you do, kids: we have no idea how to recreate the spirit of a long-forgotten franchise, but we will put one hero in line for sneakers, we will hand over another YouTube channel and the ability to hack any security system in a minute. Jess herself is far from Cage’s Ben Franklin, who is hardly a playwright, and is tediously sketchy in her ambitions. The Wibberleys, who wrote scripts for both parts of the full-length “Treasures”, after that practically did not work anywhere, which is immediately evident. The duet is torn out of the context of the surrounding reality, replacing the text with foam, and their attempts to equalize the plot gap with jokes are crowned with an inexorable failure. Visually, On the Edge of History is even more sparse, filling the space with nightmarish CGI.

It is not known whether Cage would have saved the situation if his creators had invited him (the actor is expected to appear in the second season), but for loyal fans who did not have time to be disappointed, familiar faces will still be found in the show. Keitel returns to the cameo role of Agent Sadusky, and Franklin Riley’s assistant (Justin Bartha) is now working as a podcaster and will definitely tell the heroes in which direction to move on. The young troupe is trying to look enthusiastic and lively (the result is just the opposite), only Zeta-Jones, who found a new vocation after Wednesday, adds camp and charm. Let the Disney bosses, who have danced on the bones of more than one franchise, also find him soon.