Sahara

Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

Recent video release starring Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn as treasure hunters who work on a research vessel operated by a former Navy Admiral played by William H. Macy. McConaughey has had a fixation with an iron clad ship built by the Confederacy prior to the Civil War. While in Africa, he learns that the ship may have crossed the ocean and is in Mali. Macy agrees to lend them his speedboat to tool up the Niger River to investigate.
Meanwhile, Penelope Cruz plays a doctor for the World Health Organization who is investigating a virus that seems to be coming from Mali. However, because Mali is in the midst of civil war, she cannot get approval to go there. Well, she somehow hooks up with McConaughey and Zahn. I am not quite sure how that happened, given that they do know each other, not apparently have any friends in common. But never mind, she is on the dock, and if Penelope Cruz needed a ride, I would let sit upon on my back as did the breast stroke.
So McConaughey gives her a ride to Mali, where they part company. After they depart, his boat is destroyed by a Mali dictator who is looking for Cruz. At that point, they begin to look for Cruz, knowing she is trouble.
The film is goofy, and throws all the cliches into the kitchen sink. The outlandish boat chases, the escapes, the billionaires with their technology, the criminal plan straight out of James Bond, the beautiful dessert scenery, the troops to the rescue, the beautiful girl in a bikini to end the film. The film has many logical lapses. For example, one scene in which the cast want to enter a plant in the middle of the dessert that is heavily fortified, and McConaughey sees a train on the way. What to do? Well, bury yourself next to the tracks with your camel sitting in the sun, and then emerge when the train passes, then chase the train, and jump on. All without being seen. Problem is, he sees the train chugging along from a high building, then has time to zip down to the tracks, bury three people, in close proximity to the outpost, all without being seen by anyone on the train or the guards in the outpost.
But it is also a lot of fun. McConaughey is his typical likable self. There are not many leading men that are country bumpkins, are proud of it, and make it play well. Steve Zahn is again priceless. He provides the comedy, surprise, but his timing is perfect. Cruz playing a doctor seems a stretch, but she pulls it off, largely because the film does not attempt to showcase her beauty. She mostly wears khaki pants, button shirts, occasional masks and gloves, and her hair up. And she is a good enough actress to pull off the illusion. Macy is his normally superior self. His scene are limited, mostly to brief appearances after the first twenty minutes.
The direction is pretty swift. The film contains enough changes of scenery that the film does not bog down. The screenplay does not try to be too clever, almost always a mistake in a film like this because it becomes too tedious over two hours, implies that it is trying to supply a brain where none is needed, or desired.
I recommend the film for a good two hour escape, and for those that can appreciate fun as a something that can be an end, not only a means. Please, please, if you are scientifically inclined and are prone to analyze goofy theories in a popcorn movie with the seriousness of your master's thesis, or fun is not in your vocabulary, or need logical events, then do not see the film, and if you do, please do not complain to me in the morning.

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Topic - Sahara - jamesgarvin 08:26:10 10/12/05 (1)

Re: Sahara - ishmael 14:37:53 10/17/05 (0)

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