Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
movies - Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey, left) and Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz, right) enjoy a moment in the sun. - CONTRIBUTED
Sahara, starring Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz and Steve Zhan, is a cross between a treasure-hunting movie and a story of pollution and political and capitalistic corruption. It had some of the makings of a great movie, but somehow the whole turned out less than the sum of its parts.
Directed by Breck Eisner, the film is based on a novel by Clive Cussler. Al (Zhan) and Dirk (McConaughey) have been friends since kindergarten. Now they are treasure hunters who spend most of their time diving for treasures beneath the ocean's depths. However, Dirk has always wanted to find the last iron-clad confederate ship which, despite all probability, made it from Texas to the Sahara (though it was never built to sail the ocean).
Dirk and Al are the kind who, when they hear of the 'ship of death', they think 'Cool. Let's go check that out'. Yet, despite its foolhardy heroes, Sahara falls shy of being a great action adventure.
ADRENALINE PUMPING
Its problem may be that it was a little undecided about the kind of movie that it wanted to be. Originally, it seemed as though the plan was to explore the mystery of the ship, but half-way through the story it got distracted. The plot is a little too disjointed and depends too much on coincidence.
Additionally, the film is far too tame for an action adventure. The stunts are interesting, but they are not enough to get adrenaline pumping and, though it gets better toward the end, it generally did not sustain the momentum when it found it. The dialogue is not generally witty enough.
Though there were two villians, they were not evil enough to create the spice necessary. There is the military leader Kazim and the industrialist Yves Massarde (Lambert Wilson). Wilson was much more interesting in The Matrix Reloaded. Here he pales.
McConaughey also seems to have been a poor choice for the lead role. McConaughey is a good actor and his career has shown a reasonable level of versatility. Yet, he is still most comfortable in romantic comedy roles such as How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and The Wedding Planner. He also gave a great performance in A Time to Kill. However, movies such as Reign of Fire and now Sahara shows that he wants to break out of that mould.
Unfortunately, his problem goes further than the fact that his character is named Dirk Pitt. What he brought to Sahara was 'down home charm' - and it was not what the role needed to lift off from the screen in the way Indiana Jones does. He simply was not enigmatic enough in this role. So, like him, the rest of the film tended to stay a few inches shy of larger than life.
That larger than life element is usually what makes action movies great and allows us to fool ourselves into believing the most ridiculous things, because they are, after all, fun.
Zhan is a great sidekick and creates some of the better moments in the film.
So, Sahara is more lukewarm than blazing. It simmers but it never blazes.
