Sahara
Paramount Pictures
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, William H. Macy and Steve Zahn
The Verdict: Sahara succeeds in keeping it light and remaining a disposable piece of fluff.
2 1/2 stars out of 4
Near the end of the Civil War, a Confederate ironclad loaded with gold coins left the American coast and was never conclusively located again. Rumors say the “phantom battleship” somehow made the long voyage across the Atlantic to dry land somewhere in the deserts of Africa. But that’s just a myth. Things like that don’t happen in real life, not in this cynical day and age.
Well, squelch your skepticism, unbelievers. As the opening credits of “Sahara” gaily proclaim, this isn’t real life. This is “A Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt Adventure!”
Based on one of Cussler’s many modern adventure novels, “Sahara” follows Pitt, a brawny, charming naval historian/treasure hunter, as he searches for the missing gold, becomes embroiled in all forms of North African intrigue, beats the bad guys, saves the world and maybe even settles in for a little hard-won beach blanket bingo with a sexy doctor (Penelope Cruz) tracking the source of a deadly plague outbreak.
Both Dirk’s and the doc’s roads lead from Lagos to the sandy slopes of Mali, where a cold-blooded warlord has incited a civil war and hatches shady business plans with a European corporate creep whose Saharan solar energy plant doesn’t exactly have high standards for toxic waste disposal. You can bet there’ll be plenty of setbacks along the way, but no worries, friends. It’s all in a day’s work for the globe’s preeminent cliffhanging artifact hound.
As conceived by Cussler, Dirk’s exploits are sunny, amusing and upbeat in the face of mounting crises, and director Breck Eisner’s film adaptation is similarly light and old-fashioned. Broadly drawn characters in clearly cut good-versus-evil conflicts match wits, hop aboard speeding trains, and duke it out mano a mano to a soundtrack of giddily “Goldfinger”-esque musical stings. The plot machinations are purposefully airy and shameless (the Confederate gold is really just what Hitchcock called the MacGuffin) because “Sahara” isn’t interested in big issues or intellectual growth; it’s a movie, and it just wants to keep you entertained.
Matthew McConaughey has a blast in the lead role, letting loose in a big action part after gooey stints in romantic comedies like “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Sporting thick stubble, long greasy locks, bulging biceps and a serious tan, McConaughey is all confidence and macho swagger as a man adept at all forms of combat from fist-to-fist to lip-to-lip; tellingly, the actor first appears onscreen shirtless, wet and pummeling a random bad guy to save a damsel in distress. But Dirk’s got a soft side, too. He’s a funny type, mischievous in his cunning, the kind of guy who gets a twinkle in his eye at the mention of a ghost story or at the sight of a rare 1936 hotrod.
McConaughey is wise enough to never take himself or the action too seriously, yet he avoids being too winking, too glibly in on the joke. Indeed, all the actors walk the same fine line between straightforward fun and unabashed camp without ever tipping over into the latter. “Sahara” would rather be enjoyable than hip, and this critic found the film’s unpretentiousness refreshing.
It’s also refreshing to see Steve Zahn back in form, without the mugging and overexertion of his recent turns in lame duck comedies like “Daddy Day Care.” Zahn is Al, Dirk’s colleague and trusty traveling companion, the practical yin to Dirk’s high-flying yang. It’s a sidekick role, but Zahn makes it feel like more. Al is always left cleaning up Dirk’s mess or stranded alone at dull parties or picking up dinner checks, but he can handle himself in a fight if he has to. Al knows that he and Dirk just have different functions; near film’s end, he happily tells his friend, “I’ll find the bomb. You get the girl.”
There’s a playful sense of history between McConaughey and Zahn that extends to William H. Macy as the pair’s cigar-chomping good guy boss the Admiral. In one scene, the Admiral listens in via radio as Dirk and Al frantically contemplate a last-ditch escape from a boatful of bloodthirsty Mali militiamen. The boys decide to “pull a Panama,” a stunt they’ve obviously survived before and which is obviously designed to remind film buffs of the ancient comic “routines” of Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys (“Quick, fellas, No. 37!”). A few boat crashes later, Macy gets a hard laugh as he sighs, turns off his radio and resignedly pouts, “Crap. He did a Panama.”
During the same aforementioned boat chase, Al’s most vocal concern is over the windblown loss of his favorite hat. After the action comes screeching to a halt, a rattled computer nerd type confesses to Dirk, “I shot a guy with a flare gun.” Genuinely impressed, Dirk can only offer a thumbs up and mumble, “Cool.”
These characters and moments could easily grate on the nerves if overplayed, but Eisner rarely lets that happen. His film is quickly paced and economically lensed; every shot has a sense of play, moves along the plot and captures memorable snapshots of the story’s exotic locations, from crowded seaside piers to dark scroll libraries to the scalding sandscapes of the Sahara.
There’s a feeble attempt or two at social commentary, as well (the evil warlord thinks he can get away with anything in Mali because, internationally at least, “Nobody cares about Africa”), but they fall resoundingly flat.
Despite rumblings of the pair’s offscreen romance, Cruz and McConaughey ignite no sparks in a few underwritten moments of flaccid flirting. Cruz is beautiful and game for whatever she’s called upon to do, but she lacks the presence and personality that might’ve been supplied by the likes of Salma Hayek or Paz Vega.
Sometimes, too, the action misses the mark. The film’s a little overlong, and the storytelling sometimes grows too ridiculous for its own good. Dirk just keeps making impossible physical feats easily possible. At one point Zahn literally follows a bouncing ball that leads him into a cave full of handy plot twists. By the time our heroes windsail through the desert to the familiar strains of “Magic Carpet Ride,” you may wish for a sandstorm to blow through the auditorium and sweep you outside to your long-waiting automobile.
“Sahara” ends as all good B-movies must-with shouting, explosions, ludicrous complications and failed one-liners. The whole thing washes over you with an easy, uncomplicated popcorn movie numbness that you can either take or leave at your own discretion. Whether you like it or not, in the end Dirk and Al will still wander awestruck out of the rubble and say, “There’s no way that that should’ve worked.”
True enough. Consider it a minor Hollywood miracle that “Sahara” works as well as it does. It aspires to be disposable, entertaining fluff and succeeds, and slightly fails, by accomplishing its goal.