This movie is so uneven that it is hard to believe it is the work of one writer. After an interesting and exciting start with the daring robbery of a Vatican exhibit at a Manhattan museum by knights on horseback dressed as Templars, stealing treasures including (guess what) a Templar decoding machine. This part of the movie is a decent heist / caper movie, and it's hard to dislike Mira Scorvino in anything. Tess is a likable, plucky female (rich) archaeologist and single mom, who gave up her life of adventurous excavations to stay home and take care of her daughter as her dad never had. Scenes with homages to the "Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider" genre abound. Of course, our robbers made a fatal mistake by stealing a key discovery of her late father of the "Cross of Constantine".
Interspersed are somewhat confusing and garbled flashbacks that look like blurred outtakes from "Kingdom of Heaven", which basically serve to distract one from the uneven scenes and obscure the pretense of a plot. We have in this movie unscrupulous archeologists, evil minions of the Vatican dedicated to assuring the truth stays buried, and cameos by the CIA, the FBI, and the NYPD. Scenes and dialog almost seem lifted at points from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", and absolutely miraculous coincidences and discoveries abound. Then we have the "recovery of the Titanic" portion of the movie, or is it "The Perfect Storm". I could talk about how sad this movie comes in the really wasted role of Omar Sharif as a Christian holy man on a Greek (?) island who rescues Tess and her FBI guy. The parallels between the ending of this movie on the cliff and parallel to "The Last Crusade" where the Templars' fake "Gospel of Yeshua" blows away in the wind. They treat ancient technology (an astrolabe) like it was a modern GPS.
Worth watching for a laugh.
Interspersed are somewhat confusing and garbled flashbacks that look like blurred outtakes from "Kingdom of Heaven", which basically serve to distract one from the uneven scenes and obscure the pretense of a plot. We have in this movie unscrupulous archeologists, evil minions of the Vatican dedicated to assuring the truth stays buried, and cameos by the CIA, the FBI, and the NYPD. Scenes and dialog almost seem lifted at points from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", and absolutely miraculous coincidences and discoveries abound. Then we have the "recovery of the Titanic" portion of the movie, or is it "The Perfect Storm". I could talk about how sad this movie comes in the really wasted role of Omar Sharif as a Christian holy man on a Greek (?) island who rescues Tess and her FBI guy. The parallels between the ending of this movie on the cliff and parallel to "The Last Crusade" where the Templars' fake "Gospel of Yeshua" blows away in the wind. They treat ancient technology (an astrolabe) like it was a modern GPS.
Worth watching for a laugh.