April 08, 2005 - Is it possible for product placement tie-ins to ruin one's enjoyment of a movie? I mean, after seeing one of those Sahara Jeep commercials I can't help but think that if you pay to see this movie, you're forking over $10 for a two-hour ad. And you'll be so starry-eyed about the jeep you'll have visions of dune jumping, and thus make a b-line for your nearest dealership. As if the commercials aren't enough, Sahara may be the first movie, at least the first I can think of, to advertise a product on the movie's poster. My review here, of course, is about the movie, no its advertising, so I'll stop with this: Don't we already see enough ads prior to a movie? Can't the marketing people just leave the posters alone? What's left that's sacred? Who's with me here?

That aside, the movie itself is enjoyable. Granted, it's devoid of any sense of true peril. Really, does anyone in the movie actually care that they or anyone around them might die? Stranded in the desert without water? No problem. Just been fired upon by a gang of psychotic cronies? No worries. Hanging one-handed from a 100 foot tower somewhere in Africa whilst a cut-throat bruiser stomps on your hand? All in a day's work. Sahara is check-your-mind-at-the-door, comic book action. If it suffers from one thing, it's an incredible amount of unstoppable optimism from it's protagonists. But then I guess an adventurer like Dirk Pitt, played by an enigmatic Matthew McConaughey, isn't the kind of guy who'll say, "S***, this is it, we're going to die."

Based on the book by author Clive Cussler, Sahara follows Pitt and his fellow adventurer Al Giordino, played by Steve Zahn (Riding in Cars with Boys) as they attempt to find a lost Iorn Clad warship - which, as legend has it, contains enough Civil War-ear gold coins to keep any treasure hunter out of the business and in the lap of luxury for quite some time. Pitt's quest leads him to Central Africa, where he finds an entire village has inexplicably fallen ill to an unknown virus. Pitt believes this may have been caused by the erosion of the Iron Clad's hull, from which contaminants may have worked their way into a nearby river. This may be no more than a hunch, but when he and Al are fired upon by local hired guns as they approach the village, they get the message. Keep out. This, of course, commits Pitt to find whatever secret they're protecting.

	Penelope Cruz and Matthew McConaughey in Sahara

Here's a movie where everybody's got each other's back. I'll save you. You save me. We all save each other. There's a whole lot of saving going on. But what it's really all about is a power grab, quite literally. A maniacal entrepreneur played by Lambert Wilson has set up a solar power factory in the middle of the desert which somehow will be able to reap millions in revenue at the expense of the villagers. This is a rather huge diversion from Pitts ultimate goal: to find the Iorn Clad, but it does provide the filmmakers the opportunity to offer up some neat digital effects. However, you might find yourself asking, in what kind of reality are they able to hide an expansive, solar farm corporate enterprise in the middle of the desert? Especially one with a skyscraping tower that should be viewable by anyone in the vicinity of, say, Central Africa.

Beyond the implausible, the personalities of McConaughey, Zahn and Cruz make the movie a bearably fun experience. McConaughey has a way of making one think that whatever he's doing and whatever he's saying, it's of ultimate importance. Zahn is really just this likeable guy. Sure, he's in the goofy side-kick role, and he does that well. He's the one who says, "Let's get out of here," and it's funny. Cruz, as a scientist determined to find out what happened to the villagers, is of course on her own single-minded quest for answers. She's a one note character. But what character in Sahara isn't? In a lame old comic book kind of way, Sahara is good fun. Just nothing groundbreaking here, so don't be surprised if you find yourself asking your friends, "What was that treasure movie we saw?"

Rating