“Savvy Adventure Film is a Trove of Wit and Whimsy”

Sahara opens with a pulse-pounding sequence: bombs exploding like fireworks in the night sky, Union and Confederate soldiers exchanging fire and the last ironclad ship running silent while evading cannon fire. The “Ship of Death” was rumored to carry a cargo of rare coins, but the vessel disappeared shortly after the conflict and has, for over a century, confounded historians and treasure hunters, such as...

Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey) and Al Giordino (Steve Zahn), who have been searching for clues to the whereabouts of the mystery ship, receive a dubious tip that leads them to the Niger River where they encounter Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz) and her World Health Organization entourage. Eva is in the region responding to a deadly outbreak that causes the eyes of its victims to mutate into something you’d see in a horror movie. As fate, and Clive Cussler (who wrote the novel Sahara’s screenplay is based on), would have it, Eva joins up with Dirk’s team under tumultuous circumstances—in an effort to avoid capture, Dirk and Al blow up a boat owned by their pragmatic boss, Admiral Sandecker (William H. Macy), and bloodletting rebels slaughter Eva’s team.

Any romantic potential between Dirk and Eva takes a backseat to the story’s unquenchable thirst for adventure and, in the end, it’s simply a foregone conclusion that the pair will hook up…and they do. As a character, Dirk Pitt is an enjoyable blend of Indiana Jones and James Bond—though failing to capture the appeal of either action icon—and McConaughey plays the character with the proper degree of boyish insouciance. Dirk’s sidekick, Al, fulfills his role as comic relief, but by the movie’s midpoint, his one-liners become as stale as outdated field rations…it’s a shame his character (or any other in the movie, for that matter) is never given the opportunity to become anything more than a cardboard stand-up.

As if a Civil War-era ship buried in the ubiquitous sands of West Africa isn’t far-fetched enough, Dirk and Al, in a scene that tries to be clever but isn’t, instantly throw together a ramshackle land yacht with spare parts from a crashed plane (Macgyver is green with envy). Or, how about the exhilarating, one-in-a-trillion cannon shot that takes out an enemy helicopter (granted, the movie pokes fun at itself here when Dirk and Al exclaim, “There’s no way that should’ve worked!”). And what about the ensuing flirtation with deus ex machina when natives lining the cliff scare off the bad guys—a tableau reminiscent of the one seen in Quigley Down Under? Perhaps the worst rip-off, however, is the action sequence at the recycling plant, which plays like an insipid James Bond riff…French “heavy,” Yves Massarde (Lambert Wilson), is a flaccid foil for Pitt.

Despite its many contrivances, Sahara is wildly entertaining and features a rousing climax (the cannon shot, not the beach scene). With several other Cussler novels to excavate, it’s very likely we’ll be seeing Mr. Pitt exploring the past again in the near future.

Rating: 2 1/2

Tags: Action, Adventure, Comedy