Sahara is a terrible
action adventure film which was released in the spring of 2005 by
Paramount.
Novelist
Clive Cussler wrote a book called Sahara, from whom this film is very loosely based, and he had attempted to sue to have the film stopped, after rejecting many previous drafts of the screenplay. Yes, there were multiple drafts of this film, and the end result was the culmination of those efforts. You'd think they woulda gotten it right after a few tries. Had the judge been able to SEE the film before deciding in favor of
Hollywood, the world would have been spared this treacherously pathetic attempt at an action adventure movie. Unfortunately that was not the case and I personally believe myself to be permanently scarred and traumatized by this slimly passable example of cinematic effort. Perhaps if I could get a lawyer, I could sue Paramount for mental anguish. I certainly could use the money.
Sahara has everything necessary for a successful
blockbuster. This explains why Sahara was number one in the box office its first weekend, with close to twenty million dollars in returns after being shown on well over three thousand screens nationwide. To wit: we moviegoers are
pavlovian dogs. We will go see any trite crap Hollywood throws at us, provided something blows up at least once every ten minutes. Cool looking vehicles going real fast and people shooting at one another helps too. If we can't get senseless acts of sex in our
mainstream media, we'll settle for
senseless violence. We suck. After watching this film, I'm beginning to reconsider my opinion about
pornography: could it be that the porn genre is preferable in quality to action adventure? I mean
the porn industry makes no bones about their plots existing solely to get people naked and on top of one another. In retrospect, I find I respect that attitude better than having a plot solely to get
people trying to kill each other.
Yet despite my own questionable taste in whether
sex is better for humanity than violence, the
consumers of
America have spoken: Sahara is a film more worthy of their
disposable income than
Guess Who,
Fever Pitch,
Beauty Shop, or
Miss Congeniality Two Armed and Fabulous. This of course means nothing. I've seen home movies more worthy of spending disposable income than Sahara. However, how can Sahara possibly fail? It has
Matthew McConaughey as
Dirk Pitt (and what a name is that for your stereotypical
leading man huh?), a cross between
Indiana Jones and
Randal Graves, appearing to perform death-defying stunts and otherwise
ignoring the laws of physics while after
treasure and
girls, inadvertently saving the world in the process. It has
Steve Zahn as the predictably sarcastic and laconic
sidekick that doesn't know he's a sidekick. It has
Penélope Cruz who is admittedly masterful at pretending to be intelligent while gorgeous. It has the award-winning
William H. Macy, who spends what little screen time he has in this film looking as if he lost a bet. Directed by
Breck Eisner, son of
Will Eisner, this film was put together with
training wheels, and someone forgot to take them off before releasing the film.
This is
cookie cutter cinema. You got your girl. You got your gold. You got your chase scenes. You got your kickass soundtrack. You got your bad guys, who are so predictably greedy and power-hungry that I find myself bored even attempting to describe them. You got all these beautiful locations where the stories take place mostly because they're beautiful. You got all these soulful, suffering, innocent extras mulling about making you feel sorry for them. You got more
one-liners and obvious jokes than a
Jay Leno monologue.
You got all these
plot elements which we've seen in countless other films including but not limited to the following:
1. a disease that will kill everybody unless you're wearing surgical gloves and a hospital mask (except for closeups because it obscures the well-paid Cruz's beautiful face),
2. a father-figure looking guy (
Glynn Turman) whose sole purpose in the film is to stand by the lead female ingenue (Cruz) until the writer decides he has to die to prove to the audience that the bad guys mean business.
3. a lost treasure which is vaguely researched for historical significance making one wonder blandly throughout the film how the American
Civil War has anything to do with the rest of the film: answer? Not much.
4. a lot of chase scenes, including one with boats. (!)
5. lots of things blowing up.
6. lots and lots of guns because they're so cool.
7. a
romantic subplot so unbelievably predictable it's insulting.
8. a train, because action movies should always have a train.
9. the bad guy's lair, complete with plenty of hiding places for the good guys and plenty of drug-induced comas for the contract-labor bad guy
henchmen.
10. a connect-the-dot
linear plot structure whose sole purpose is to keep the characters moving from one insanely predictable dillema to the next.
Of course the lead good guy knows how to fight in dramatic ways that make him look good without breaking a sweat. Of course the lead good guy puts together obscure clues and reaches for conclusions in much the same way as
Batman and Robin did in their sixties sitcom days. Of course the lead good guy is perfectly capable and ready for anything the bad guys throw at him, as if the bad guys were perfectly chosen to be just a little worse at everything than the lead good guy. Of course the lead good gal falls instantly in love with the lead good guy, but plays coy cuz she's got important saving-the-world-from-this-disease stuff to attend to, but we all know they'll eventually run to
Monterey's Coast and have lots of
sex after the film's over. Of course the lead good gal should be capable of saving herself because women are no longer
damsels in distress, but she lets the lead good guy save her repeatedly anyway because she wants him to think he's doing well.
Of course the lead good guy is financed by an insanely wealthy dude who still gets just a little upset when the lead good guy blows up his boat. Of course the sidekick who doesn't know he's a sidekick keeps losing his hat and isn't that funny not really. Of course the sidekick just happens to follow a ball he was kicking around until it just happens to stop bouncing when it lands where the script wanted the sidekick to end up. Of course the idea that an old boat loosely based off some Civil War historical references would end up in the middle of the Sahara and still have functionable weaponry and armor some hundred and fifty years later is completely unbelievable. This movie is intended to be brain-dead entertainment for the masses, so the people making the movie will make a lot of money. It's not supposed to make sense, that wouldn't be any fun would it?
So if you want your entertainment with a side order of a
frontal lobotomy, by all means check this one out. It's fun. It's also stupid. It's
stupid fun. Personally, I prefer my entertainment with a side order of at least veiled intelligence. Sahara wants to be the
Romancing The Stone of the 21st century, but barely qualifies for a
Road Runner cartoon. I would hesitate to not ruin the film for you, but the film ruined itself already so there's little more I can do here. Let me just end with this: one of the bad guys gets blown up in a helicopter, another bad guy falls off a cliff screaming to his death, and the third bad guy.. Well I honestly can't remember what happened to him but it was probably in some manner that would allow him to return for the
sequel. And God help us, there may very well be a sequel to Sahara, because it did make almost twenty million dollars its first weekend, and Hollywood is nothing if not
tasteless.