History mystery

I always like it when some fellow has a kid late in life and two centuries later you wind up talking to some l’il ol’ lady whose gram’pa was in the War of 1812 — the long slender thread of a personal connection to history. That’s how National Treasure begins: it’s 1974 and Christopher Plummer is talking to his wee grandson about a tale he in turn heard as a young slip of a lad from his own grandfather, who in turn heard it from the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. It’s about hidden treasure — but not some rinky-dink nouveau-riche arriviste 18th-century treasure. No, this goes way back: men have fought over it for generations — and, just to prove it, while Christopher Plummer’s yakking on, director Jon Turteltaub cuts to some Roman guys in leather skirts warring over unspecified artefacts. It goes way back before that, of course, but wisely Turteltaub decided not to show Ug the Caveman trying to swipe it out from under the triceratops next door.