Most movies, even those that seem rather mindless, actually do have some serious thematic content behind the action, comedy, romance, and other surface elements—as I have observed frequently on this site and elsewhere.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets initially seems very unusual in this respect: it appears to have no interesting thematic content whatsoever.

It’s amazingly fluffy and superficial, and works as great, unserious Hollywood entertainment. It is thoroughly successful at that.

Nonetheless, there is some serious thematic content to the film, which we would do well to see.

At the center of the movie is the issue of the roles in the American Civil War of the ancestors of the protagonist and the villain.

The villain, Jeb Wilkinson (Ed Harris), is an unreconstructed Southern partisan who claims that an admired ancestor of protagonist Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) was actually a traitor to the Union cause and participated in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

That, of course, is quite a blow to Ben, and he refuses to accept the evidence and sets out to clear his ancestor’s name.

Setting aside the issues of what were the real causes of the War Between the States, as the movie itself is very eager to do (the issues could not possibly be handled in a more superficial way than the film does), there is an important and very unusual theme behind all of this: family honor.

Ben Gates cares deeply about the reputation of his dead ancestor, not for Ben’s own sake but to ensure that the record about his ancestor is accurate and that he is given proper honor. Hence Ben’s actions are both altruistic and devoted to a search for the truth. That makes his character a good model for personal conduct in a fundamental way.

We don’t hear much about either family or honor these days, and for that to be at the center of a major Hollywood movie is quite refreshing.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets is a thoroughly nutty film in story terms, with logical holes galore. Yet the impulse behind its central story line is highly laudable indeed, and its depiction of an individual’s powerful sense of honor is something from which audiences can derive much benefit.