SCI FI PI

Released Dec 20

Starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris
Director Jon Turtletaub
Rating PG

This isn’t in the ‘it’s so bad it’s good category’. This is in the ’it’s so utterly stupendously unbelievable, you just have to go with it’ category.

The key to enjoying this film is to be aware that it is a treasure hunt. Anything to do with plot, characters, reality or logic are merely afterthoughts to a story engine that differs from the traditional script structure in that you have an event, that leads to an event to another and another and another as each subsequent act becomes either more complicated, fraught with danger or far-fetched.

It’s kind of Fear Factor for story. Each part doesn’t really have to make sense as part of a whole, because it’s only the ‘right now’ that’s pertinent. So if you end up having to break into Buckingham Palace to have a look at a desk, then we want to see how that’s done. We won’t stop and ask why we don’t, as a world famous historian or as director of the Library of Congress Archives, just get an appointment.


This kind of logic evasion works a treat for such sequences that involve kidnapping the President of the USA, getting highly detailed ancient wooden carvings photographed by a red light camera for later use and watching Jon Voight and Helen Mirren perform Indian Jones style vine- swinging together across fatal chasms.

It’s all deliciously silly, and it really does break the silly barrier to the point where offensively inane dialogue is just water off a duck’s back.

So, when you hear that the story involves Nic Cage trying to restore the honour of his long dead ancestor, falsely accused of masterminding Abraham’s Lincoln’s assassination, by decrypting a code in John Wilkes Booth’s notebook about The Lost City of Gold, which can only be solved by stealing the ‘Book of Secrets’ held only by the President of The United States that contains the real info on the JFK assassination, Area 51 and Watergate, and the Lost City, you’ll say ‘sure, why not?’


This film retains as much logic as Nicolas Cage’s hair. Yet, like those follicles, strangely mesmerising. Enjoy with mind open and brain empty.