Sahara

I think I have a little bit of a bias with this movie. I watched this movie when I was younger and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I grew up loving movies like Indiana Jones and National Treasure that movies like this fell directly within my wheelhouse. Something about digging into conspiracies about American history and exploring ancient ruins is just a lot of fun and I expected that from this movie.

I know as a kid I really enjoyed this movie, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie. Does it hold up?

Sahara stars Matthew McConaughy as Dirk Pitt and Steve Zahn as his partner in crime, Al Giordino. The two of them are treasure hunters and have been partners since their time in the military, all the way up to their treasure hunting days. Dirk has always had the goal of finding a Confederate warship that by some miracle, is rumored to have ended up in the desert of war torn Mali. Nobody believes that that the warship is where Dirk believes it is and dismiss it as a wild fairy tale.

At the same time, a team of Doctors led by Eva Rojas (played by Penelope Cruz) are trying to gain access to Mali in order to figure out the source of a plague that has been ravaging African citizens in surrounding countries.

The two teams figure out that the two situations are more connected than they realize and they set out on an adventure to find a trove of Confederate gold, while investigating a James Bond villain like plot for a warlord to consolidate power and inadvertently cause an environmental catastrophe.

The first plus for this movie is that the cast is a really good cast. While this movie came out at a time before the McConaughassaince and before he started giving Oscar winning performances, it is a fun role as Dirk is your pretty typical dashing rogue. And yeah, you still get a lot of his Southern drawl,

you can tell he’s itching to take his shirt off, and at any point you’re expecting him to end a sentence with, “Alright, alright, alright.” However, I did enjoy McConaughy  in this movie if not for the sake that I know things work out for him in the end.

Steve Zahn is an actor who I actually think is really underrated. I can think of a handful of movies I really enjoyed him in and if the movie wasn’t good, I can’t say it was really his fault. In this he plays the standard best friend companion. He’s the dorky comic relief to balance the dashing hero that McConaughy  plays.

This is something that you might have to understand about this movie While I really enjoyed the cast of this film, you’ll soon realize that the cast and the characters are all pretty standard and fall into a certain trope. This is definitely the case with Penelope Cruz. There’s nothing incredibly unique about Eva. She’s a decent female lead and a decent enough love interest.

One thing I will give this movie credit for is the chemistry they create between characters. While I have seen multiple romances that are better than Dirk and Eva's, I did like their dynamic. They were a flirtatious couple and you can tell that the two of them are going to get together at the end, but they don’t really focus on that until the very end. Sure there’s the sexual tensions that you know they’re going to act on at some point, but they really don’t until the end because they understand the gravity of the situation. While its still a pretty formulaic romance, it is done in a different enough way for me to take notice and actually kind of enjoy.

Furthermore, the chemistry between Dirk and Al, and the group dynamic of all three of our main characters is pretty good. You can believe that Dirk and Al have been friends since forever. I think this movie was supposed to be the start of an adventure franchise starring these two and I am disappointed because I would have enjoyed to see Matthew McConaughy  and Steve Zahn continue that partnership to future films.

If you need a comparison of the three main characters of this film, think of The Mummy. In the Mummy you have the dashing rogue who is your hero. The ambitious and smart female lead who is a little bit out of her league and while she’s strong, she will need rescuing, and finally the comic relief. Its been done in The Mummy and its been done a lot of other places.

Sure there are other characters like Rain Wilson’s character who has some comedic moments, William H Macy playing their authority figure that they don’t listen to. But at the end of the day, the characters in this film are pretty formulaic and unfortunately that dampens their ability to be incredibly interesting. That all being said, I still do think the cast is a plus of this movie because while they are formulaic, you can tell that these people had fun with this movie. I think they do a pretty good job with their performances, I just don’t know if they were given a script that was constructive enough for those performances to be distinctive enough.

Now the structure of this story is also pretty formulaic and nothing to get over excited about. However, the story is pretty unique. I mean a Confederate warship ending up in the deserts of Africa combined with a James Bond-like plot they need to foil, it’s pretty unique. The issue that Sahara runs into is that it almost goes too far into being so unique that it doesn’t capture the imagination the way other adventure movies have. National Treasure was very good at capturing real live historical events and connecting it to the plot in a way that seemed probable and made the adventure fun. One Google search about the story of Sahara will make you understand pretty quickly that this is all fiction and the movie doesn’t really do a great job trying to convince you otherwise.

There are moments in the film that feel like a classic adventure film, and then there are moments that you feel like you’re in a James Bond film. Now you’d think that the combination of a movie in the genre of Indiana Jones would meld perfectly with a spy thriller like James Bond, but for some reason it just doesn’t come off as incredibly inspiring in this film. Both moments are good but for some reason they don’t really meld well together.

It might sound that I am not a fan of this movie anymore when that really isn’t the case. All of the notes that I’ve mentioned about this movie, and the issues that I’ve brought up don’t really disguise the fact that this movie is fun. The action is a lot of fun, the characters while formulaic are entertaining and well acted, and the plot, while goofy, is in the same vein as a movie like National Treasure. I had a lot of fun with Sahara. I get the feeling that if this movie had been given the opportunity for a sequel, they would have been able to make a franchise that had a little bit more of a distinct flavor to it. As it is though, it’s a fun, pretty standard adventure film that you probably will enjoy if you give it a shot.

But that’s what I think of Sahara. What do you think of that film? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. McConaughey is best known for his role in Days and Confused where he had an iconic line that really hasn't gone away no matter how talented an actor he has become. Here's the origin of that line. Enjoy!