Salt Lake Tribune Review
Even by the forgiving standards of Hollywood action movies, "Sahara" is a spectacularly silly endeavor -- a hodgepodge of Indiana Jones, James Bond and Tom Clancy that doesn't make a lick of sense and doesn't seem too bothered by that.
Based on an entry in
Clive Cussler's best-selling adventure novels (books that, one suspects, sell mostly at airports), "Sahara" introduces moviegoers to treasure hunter Dirk Pitt, played here by the impossibly handsome
Matthew McConaughey. Pitt is on the trail of his personal Holy Grail, a Confederate ironclad that disappeared at the end of the Civil War. For reasons too ridiculous to detail, Pitt and his wisecracking sidekick Al Giordino (
Steve Zahn) believe the Civil War warship wound up buried in the West African nation of Mali.
They're not the only ones interested in Mali. A World Health Organization doctor, Eva Rojas (
Penelope Cruz), is tracking a deadly disease to its roots in Mali when she learns the disease may be caused by pollution dumped by a ruthless industrialist (French actor
Lambert Wilson, from the "Matrix" movies). To complicate things, the polluter is also sugar daddy to Pitt and Giordano's research unit, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, or NUMA, a group that would make a good parody of Jacques Cousteau if "The Life Aquatic" hadn't beaten them to it.
McConaughey plays Pitt as a ruggedly laid-back hero -- imagine Jimmy Buffett after Soloflex -- but he's so relaxed he gets upstaged by Cruz, Zahn and his own shiny teeth. But if imagining this party animal as an action-movie hero seems tough, try wrapping your head around the idea of the always-wacky Zahn as the movie's save-the-day guy.
Director
Breck Eisner (who worked on the miniseries "Taken") strings together action sequences almost at random. And neither Eisner nor the script's four credited writers can find much to do with its better supporting cast members, like
William H. Macy as NUMA's cigar-chomping boss.
Still, it's hard not to smile at the audacious way "Sahara" doesn't just shrug off its innate absurdity but actively embraces it. If you can't laugh with it, you can laugh at it -- and this movie will take whatever laughter it can get.
The rundown: A spectacularly silly hodgepodge of Indiana Jones, James Bond and Tom Clancy.
Synopsis: When master explorer Dirk Pitt finds a fabled coin linked to a historical legend, he takes on the adventure of his life as he embarks on a treasure hunt through some of the most dangerous regions of West Africa. As they search for what locals call the “Ship of Death”--a long-lost Civil War battleship that protects a secret cargo--Dirk and his wisecracking sidekick, Al Giordino, meet Dr. Eva Rojas, a beautiful and brilliant doctor who believes that the hidden treasure may be connected to a larger problem that threatens the world around them. Hunting for a ship that no one else thinks exists, Dirk, Al, and Eva must rely on their wits and their daring heroics to outsmart dangerous warlords, survive the threatening terrain, and get to the bottom of both mysteries.
