Sahara Review

As a big dopey action flick that is entertaining, but wouldn’t quite cut it in the fierce competition of the summer movie season, “Sahara” makes a decent adventure outing for those looking to get a jump on that sort of thing. Nowhere else will you get the excitement of Mathew McConaughey and Steve Zahn punching, kicking, shooting, and outrunning various thugs at every turn while chasing a long lost U.S. Civil War treasure in the middle of the Sahara Desert (don’t ask). It’s all set to a rousing action score as well as several shoehorned-in overly familiar classic rock tunes. (Come on, who doesn’t long to hear the opening twangs of “Sweet Home Alabama” while watching Hollywood pretty boys duke it out in the middle of nowhere in Africa? Anyone?)

Okay, so maybe this isn’t the greatest or most original movie in the world. It’s certainly true that this film doesn’t offer us anything particularly new in the long run. But here’s the deal – it never really claims to be anything more than what it is, and on that level – and ONLY on that level – it succeeds, absolutely.

It’s easy to make fun of things like the absurdity of the plot (something about a Civil War ironclad gunboat containing treasure that’s gone missing in the Sahara), or the ridiculous coincidental ease with which the characters get put back on track when all hope appears to be lost, but this was never intended to be brain surgery. Based on a novel by Clive Cussler, “Sahara” is your run of the mill action genre gun-toting potboiler peppered up with a good dose of History Channel-style military-enthusiast baiting, and ecological fantasy.

Director Breck Eisner, known only for being the son of the ousted evil Disney mastermind Michael Eisner, does a pretty good job with the material, all things considered. He even saw fit to dignify the proceedings ever-so-slightly with the welcome presences of William H. Macy and Delroy Lindo in supporting roles. The lead casting of McConaughey and Zahn as lifelong buddies does the most to keep this potential stinker afloat, though. Although their witty banter comes off as eye-rollingly bad in the advertising, it actually works within the context of the film, once you get settled into it. This being an action/adventure buddy movie, it’s a real good thing that that component holds together, which is more than I can say for the romantic relationship between McConaughey’s dashing but perpetually sweaty leading man (named, get this - Dirk Pitt. I didn’t think names like that could be had outside of a “Left Behind” novel!) and Penelope Cruz’s duller-than-dirt eco-heroine. To say that those two actors have zero chemistry would be a laughable understatement, but fortunately, they share very little screen time.

Perhaps fortunately for us, Dirk Pitt’s (y’know, that’s really hard to type without snickering) obsessive search for the loot and Cruz’s crusade to foil the source of the toxic pollution that’s wreaking environmental havoc tie together oh-so-nicely, so everyone gets to work together in both the glory of the treasure hunt and the dirty game of saving Africa. Yes, this film does have a muddled socially conscious message built into the fabric of its plot, but on the whole, it’s preferable to the type of tactics that have brought better action films than this to an unnecessary grinding halt because Richard Donner and Danny Glover decided we ought to take a moment to hear about dolphin-safe tuna products. This isn’t the big budget action/adventure version of “Hotel Rwanda”, but only once does it briefly come off as trying to be. Of course it all comes down to corporate greed and third-world exploitation, but hey, it also comes down to missing treasure, shootouts galore, and lots of stuff blowing up in big, neato explosions. So fellas, if you’ve been trying to find just the right movie to ask that environmentally-conscious hottie to see with you, but didn’t want to be bored for two hours, “Sahara” is just the ticket. Just hope she isn’t also a script-and-story-conscious hottie. And keep in mind, the summer movie season is just around the corner, and it will only get even better, right? Right? Anyone?

- Jim Tudor