Romantic adventure - just add water

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When they talk about “movies for guys who like movies,” they mean movies like “Sahara.” You know the kind I’m talking about. The hero and his sidekick roll with the punches while they shoot clip after clip of bullets at the enemy without once getting shot themselves. Every once in a while something blows up (real good!). Through it all, a beautiful woman is dragged along just to keep things real...Riiiiiiiight.

If you can suspend your disbelief for a good two hours, then none of the preposterous antics that take place in Dirk Pitt’s exotic world will matter. Maybe that’s the point of films like this. Action/Adventure movies are supposed to be outlandish. That’s what makes them fun and exciting. Too bad it doesn’t make them all that interesting.

It’s obvious from the get go that “Sahara” wants to wow us like Indiana Jones and James Bond combined. It does a fair job of throwing DIrk, and his cocky sidekick Al, into dangerous situations where they are outgunned and outnumbered, but never outsmarted. Matthew McConaughey’s Dirk is an all-around great guy, even though he tends to get the people around him into too many tight situations. His longtime buddy, Al, played by Steve Zahn, has most of the good lines and glib reactions in the movie. They are just few and far between. Dirk is too cool to be entertaining.

Penelope Cruz is the requisite love interest. She a do-gooder for W.H.O., The World Health Organization. As she is trying to find the answer to a so-called plague in Nigeria, she meets Dirk, and eventually teams up with him to stop the sickness from spreading. Meanwhile Dirk and Al are in search of a lost ship similar to Old Ironsides form the Civil War. Everyone gets sidetracked by the corrupt regime then in place in Nigeria, forcing “the three musketeers” to save the world.

This brings me to the main problem with this story. It’s all so predictable and safe like a ride at Six Flags. Sure Dirk is hanging by his toes 1000 feet in the air, but he’ll land on his feet and spin around just in time to do whatever it is he has to do so that Armageddon, or something like it can be averted. Usually I don’t question the far-fetched nonsense that people like James Bond and his ilk get away with, but Dirk and Al ask us to believe too much in their ability to get away with murder and more.

In one scene when the two good guys are handcuffed to the bed of a truck that’s flying across the desert, they get loose by pushing themselves and the bed liner off the back. Even though the guy riding shotgun continually turns around to check on his captives, he doesn’t notice the enormous thud of their escape.

In another scene, the three heroes bury themselves in the sand next to their camels, then leap out and onto the animals to hop a train on its way to a secret desert compound. I just want to know where they get all their energy!

They never seem to eat, but they have enough adrenaline to power a yacht. I would cheer them on if I could only believe in their existance for one minute. Indiana Jones did a lot of unbelievable things, but his character was believable. James Bond has a gadget for every occasion. At least he stops to have a martini every so often. Dirk Pitt doesn’t need food or water. All he needs is a good plan, and when I say good I mean a plan with no chance of working. As the two guys keep saying in this movie, “There’s no way that should have worked.”

Somehow it does work...as a light entertainment. Dirk gets the girl, finds the sunken treasure and keeps the planet from becoming a giant toxic waste dump. This a no-brainer, a travelogue set in dusty, old Africa. There just seemed to be too many lulls where I thought to myself, ‘There’s no way I should be enjoying this movie,’ but I did.