Lost Treasure

The writing was puerile and run of the mill, the director should have flogged. But Steven Baldwin was understated and came across very naturally - there's that.

Released to cable in 2003 and directed by Jim Wynorski, "Lost Treasure" is an action/adventure flick about two estranged brothers (Coby Ryan McLaughlin and Stephen Baldwin) who team-up after finding a map to Columbus' lost treasure on a remote island in Panama. Nicollette Sheridan plays the bush pilot they hire while Scott L. Schwartz & Tami-Adrian George play an entertaining tourist couple for comic relief. Hannes Jaenicke and Jerry Doyle are on hand as heavies.

I'm giving this a relatively low grade because it's TV-budget comic book escapism with a story that's sometimes eye-rolling and not that compelling. But the protagonists are likable, there are a lot of thrills (with numerous explosions, if that's your thang), the locations are good and the story moves right along.

The film runs 90 minutes and was shot in Charlotte, NC, and the Los Angeles Arboretum.

GRADE: C-

I have no idea why these films are still made. "Lost Treasure" -- the over-simplified title says it all. I had no plans to see it at all... I just bumped upon it (however lame that sounds, it's true). William Baldwin with a beard is the 'star' of this film. But what can actors do when they are to play such stereotypical and two-dimensional characters? The film used archive or shelf footages for CGI effects etc. That confirms that it's a low-budget venture after all.

It has a story you have heard/seen million times before. It has actors at their worsts. It has dialogues that encourage fourth-graders to write a screenplay. Nothing in it shows any trace of innovation or originality. How many films such as these are awaiting us in the future?

Evidently, a good place to hide a fifteenth century treasure map is behind a not very interesting painting, which will eventually end up in an art gallery. How would anyone know that it was hidden behind a painting? Well that, and most of the other details of this film, is never explained. For example, why would an art museum be loaded up with 55-gallon drums of gasoline, so that when it is torched as a diversion to stealing the painting, they could explode like rockets? And for that matter, with all the exploding and flames everywhere, the painting should have been burnt to a crisp before anyone had a chance to swipe it. But this is supposed to be a thriller, so all the absurd pyrotechnics of the beginning were evidently thought necessary to startle the twelve-year-olds in the audience.

After that as an introduction, the basic idea is that there are no good guys, just varying degrees of bad guys and bystanders, who end up chasing after a lost treasure. Never mind that one is a cop and another a government agent, sworn to an oath to serve the public, and hence any treasure they might discover as a result of doing their jobs would more correctly belong to the people they serve. In other words, the basic message of this film is that serving the public might be fine in theory, but when the potential for feathering one's nest with a vast fortune gets involved, best to take the money and run. No wonder the current generation has so little faith in public servants. When they go to the movies, they see them portrayed as only marginally less greedy than the crooks.

This is a shameful story, which promotes the view that no matter how you end up with the loot, it is yours to keep and enjoy. The bad guys, who want to keep it all for themselves, must first be knocked out of course, after which the `good' guys get to divide the hoard. And the reason why they are `different' from the crooks is because they are less `violently' motivated by greed. In other words, if avarice is pursued less violently, perhaps more humanely, then it's okay. In any case, what matters is that you end up with the prize. Having the money is more important that how you got it. That, unfortunately, is the message of this story, and it is as harmful to the fabric of society as it could possibly be. It makes greed seem romantic and exciting, while acting as though social responsibility was not even worth considering.

Get off your moral high horse, it's a movie meant for entertainment purposes and not meant to reflect the values of a society. Don't take it or yourself so seriously and accept the movie in the context it was initially created for, a 90 minute exercise in escapism.