nick cage be gate and a treasure hunter ( oh and excuse me . treasure protector and whatever that mean ) who be descend from a long line of treasure hunter . one of his ancestor have be give a clue to the whereabouts of a huge treasure that our founding father and most if not all freemason and have decide to hide because they just do not want to finance their independence all that badly . the first clue turn out to be in a long lost ship hidden in the arctic . gate and his crew and consisting of financier ian ( sean bean ) and movie dork riley ( justin bartha of the immortal gigli ) and a couple of faceless lackey and enter the cargo hold of the ship . they immediately spill out ton of gunpowder all over the floor and not that this be significant in any way . at last they find the clue ( a skeleton be hover over it ) and it turn out to be a pipe with writing . on it . sort of . don not ask me to explain . it a riddle and and despite the fact that his expedition be clearly miff at not find the actual treasure and gate wanders around yammer to himself about the meaning of the riddle and in this frozen cargo hold and while the crew just stand around slack jawed . i mean and come on . someone should have be a little vocal in their disappointment of come all the way to the freaking arctic and not find anything interesting and but they just stand there a gate enters his own world and solve the riddle . the next clue turn out to be on the declaration of independence . ian decides to steal it . gate be appal . various character deliver gratingly obvious exposition ( get use to it ) . all this lead to ian lackey pull a gun on gate and and the gunpowder go off in a big explosion . ( oh and that why they spill all the gunpowder . huh . ) ian and his henchman make their escape and and gate and movie dork riley walk nine mile in subzero temperature to an inuit village in order to stop them . to stop them and gate concludes after try the fbi and super archivist abigail chase ( diane kruger ) and gate and riley must steal it themselves . riley then tell gate in excruciate detail why they can not steal the declaration and because it so protect with metal and laser eye and high tech security blah blah . gate then tell riley that there an opportunity to steal it from the preservation room . do riley know what the preservation room be and gate asks . a place where they make jam and jelly . i be not kid while that the actual line . bartha doesn not deliver it like a joke and either . so riley do all this research about the library of congress and the archive and water and sewage and fercryinoutloud and but doesn not know what the preservation room be . this pretty much indicate what level this script be on . to make the rest of this short and gate do in fact make off with the d of i and in a ridiculous break in that could only happen in a movie . ( i also hate the way they depict computer monitor technology in movie full of improbable and impractical graphic and font . ) abigail chase end up tag along for convenience sake and and a an obvious love interest angle . at one point and the three of them and on the run from the law and discuss all their plan really loudly in a clothing store and surround by people . a series of clue and the kidnapping of gate father and play by a dyspeptic jon voight and lead good guy and bad guy alike to a huge indiana jones fun house locate underneath new york city . odd that the subway builder never find this thing . gate and gate senior lead ian off on a wild goose chase . ian believe theyre trap in a cul de sac and leave them there . however and after theyre go and riley ask how theyre go to get out . gate . oh boy . press a button and a door open . no and i be serious . a button and like they might have on a vacu flush lavatory in an office building . good thing he know where that be . anyway and after some more knob twiddling and they find this immense treasure room ( remember and this be all underneath manhattan . ) full of all sort of historyish golden thing . riley get to deliver a really stupid line . again . and fbi officer harvey keitel forgive them and arrest sean bean and and allow the two chemistry less lead to get married . for any viewer and i think it would be hard to ignore all the exposition and the leap of logic and and the stereotyped character for very long . though some of it exposition involve nice history lesson insert into conversation at random moment . i would like more conversation like that in my life .