Sahara
Forget stars. The best way to measure a film is how many drinks you need before it begins to be really entertaining. Sahara’s a three glass show, wine or beer, though you might get away with a couple of cocktails …
Sahara’s one of those shows that just wants to please, and tries to do so by being as silly as possible.
What passes for a plot sees thrill seeking underwater adventurer (Matthew McConaughey) and wisecracking buddy (Steve Zahn) go in search of a US Civil War ironclad. Where else to look but up a river in dictator dominated Africa? (There’s a few lines explaining how this might actually have happened – pass another glass of the red juice puhlease). That brings them into contact with sweet committed doctor Penelope Cruz, who is fearful an epidemic is about to kill all life in Africa, and maybe the entire world. And if Pinky or the Brain get hold of it, the entire Universe.
So it’s not just a romp, it’s a romp with a social conscience. Well if you believe the slick of a DVD, you’ll believe anything. William H. Macy, proving he’ll do anything these days, is the boys’ ostensible boss, while Lambert Wilson (of Matrix fame) is given the job of being the suave baddie who just wants to zap things for no apparent economic reason (but then when has being a James Bond kind of fiend been a sensible form of capitalism). Wilson’s a pretty straight up and down corporate villain, pickable from the start, and he shows a distinct lack of imagination in relation to Cruze.
The story is based on a Clive Cussler story, and the main character is known as Dirk Pitt – a name which bears more than a sneaking resemblance to a porn name like Dirk Diggler or Dirk Dagger or Dirk Deadly. But hey this is a show pitched to ten year old boys, so while Cruz naturally becomes a damsel in distress, don’t expect anything much in the way of that kind of action – not when you can blow up a boat, or have a feud with the locals, who act amazingly like Indians in an old western, or stumble across the most fiendish CGI plant ever assembled in a computer and put in the middle of a desert. There are of course plenty of Riffs, as old time director Richard Brooks used to say about the kind of extras you find in a desert flick, along with Sabu and camels.
It’s all done in cheerful enough spirit, of the ‘with a leap and a bound and he’s fre’e kind of plotting, where there’s relentless action, and not a drop of sense to any of it – starting with the quest for theiro nclad and finishing with the use of a Civil War cannon to down a rocket laden helicopter. When a character gets an arrow through a leg, it’s nothing more than a scratch, and when someone gets an attack of a virus, it affects the eyes in a way that will please any zombie lover (in fact the make up pleased the director so much we get an abundance of close ups).
The terrain covered freely roams over buddy movie, the life aquatic, African derring do adventurism, cowboys and Indians, and James Bond. No genre is overlooked in the quest for hokey references, and hokey replays of action sequences already well mined in other shows (guess it saves having to think).
The images look in pretty good shape for what seems an average action movie, though the CGI’s do stand revealed in the sometimes cruel DVD format as being not much better than a hall of mirrors. The emphasis tends to be on nice wide shots and exotic locations (with Morocco and Spain providing plenty of visually stunning desert vistas), and perhaps that’s better than concentrating too hard on expensive action. Instead the fights tend to boat v boat, chopper v civil war boat, goodie almost slipping into turbines (baddie stomping on fingers like he’s just seen North by North West).
So this is a Friday night at home three glass movie – one to get you in the mood, one to settle into the hokey action, and the third to keep you stoked as things get really silly. Keep on remembering the patron saint of silly movies, Monty Python, and it’s not a bad way to waste a couple of hours of your life. (As an extra special bonus deluxe extra, the DVD has no extras, thereby relieving you of any duty to listen and learn as people explain in all seriousness how purest hokum was distilled for the show, and refined and matured in an oak barrel over a century and a half, or at least since the end of the American Civil War).
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