It is the first film in the National Treasure franchise and stars Nicolas Cage in the lead role, Harvey Keitel, Jon Voight, Diane Kruger, Sean Bean, Justin Bartha and Christopher Plummer.

In the film, Benjamin Franklin Gates, a historian, along with computer expert Riley Poole and archivist Abigail Chase, search for a massive lost Freemason treasure, which includes a map hidden on the back of the United States Declaration of Independence.

When Ben was young, his grandfather John told him a story about a fabled treasure hidden in America passed down from ancient times to the Knights Templar, Founding Fathers, and Freemasons.

Ben and his friend, computer expert Riley Poole, head an expedition financed by wealthy Englishman Ian Howe to find the Charlotte, revealed to be a ship lost in the Arctic.

Going to Patrick's house, the trio studies the Declaration and discovers a book cipher written in invisible ink.

Paying a schoolboy to view the letters and decipher the code for them, Ben, Riley, and Abigail discover a message pointing to the bell tower of Independence Hall.

Pursued by Ian, they find a brick containing a pair of spectacles with multiple colored lenses, which, when used to read the back of the Declaration, reveal a clue pointing to Trinity Church.

They travel to the Trinity Church, where they find an underground passage that appears to lead to a dead end, lit by a lone lantern.

Ben then finds a notch the meerschaum pipe fits into, opening a large chamber containing the treasure, with a staircase to the surface.

In exchange for dropping the charges on him and Abigail, Ben wants to donate the treasure to museums worldwide, crediting the Gates family and Riley for the discovery and Ian's arrest in place of his own.

On a tip from Ben, the FBI finds Ian in Boston, breaking into the Old North Church, and arrests him and his henchmen on the spot.

David Dayan Fisher appears as Shaw, Stewart Finlay-McLennan as Powell, Oleg Taktarov as Viktor Shippen, and Stephen Pope as Phil McGregor (Ian's henchmen); Annie Parisse, Mark Pellegrino, Armando Riesco, and Erik King play agents Dawes, Ted Johnson, Hendricks, and Colfax, respectively.

[9] All tracks are written by Trevor RabinThe film's suggestion that the original Declaration of Independence still has clearly visible ink is inaccurate.

In Japan, National Treasure bested the double-billing MegaMan NT Warrior: Program of Light and Dark and Duel Masters: Curse of the Deathphoenix, grossing $11,666,763 in its first week.

"[23] Academic David Bordwell has expressed a liking for the film, placing it in the tradition of 1950s Disney children's adventure movies,[24] and using it as the basis for an essay on scene transitions in classical Hollywood cinema.

To help promote Book of Secrets, a special collector's edition, two-disc DVD set of the movie was released on December 18, 2007.

[33] In an April 2022 "Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit, Cage responded to a question about his involvement in possible future installments: "No, the priority was to turn it into a TV show so I would say probably not.