Sahara

Sahara (Director: Breck Eisner)

There's not much that Breck Eisner is known for, unless you caught "The Invisible Man" series on TV. He's probably best-known for being former Disney chief Michael Eisner's son. This is based on Clive Cussler's novel, one of his many "Dirk Pitt" adventures.

This movie combines Indiana Jones with, you guessed it, Erin Brockovich. Much like last November's National Treasure, and the Jones trilogy, the movie sets up a quest for hero Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey) and his friend Al (Steve Zahn) through events of historical significance, this time the Civil War. Pitt has an obsession with finding an old Confederate warship, and one of his friends has found a rare coin that the captain of that ship owned, and found it near the Niger River, leading Pitt and Al to go to Mali, a small country in Africa, looking for the lost vessel. This all seems a fairy tale to employer James Sandecker (William H. Macy), the main man at NUMA (Nation Underwater Marine Agency, founded by Cussler), but he allows them three days to find the ship.

Of course, there's a war going on in Mali, with a dictator (Lennie James) and his followers versus a rebellion, and it's being funded by a man who's in the solar energy business (The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions' "Merovingian" Lambert Wilson). He has stumbled onto something that has made his business more profitable, but at an extreme environmental cost that has people dying, and the poison seems to be spreading in the water and in danger of going worldwide. This is where World Health Organization hottie Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz) comes in, attempting to do some good in the world, and eventually becomes tied up with Pitt and Al, as their quests intersect.

I guess my problem with all of this is how complex this damn thing has to be. The joy of Indiana Jones is that there's something valuable that needs to be retrieved, there's two sides who want it, and a natural conflict occurs. Here, we've got deadly poison, a rebellion, a historical mystery--it's kind of messy. I liked National Treasure mainly because it adhered to the simple formula--I'm all for plot complexity, but certainly a filmmaker has to realize what kind of movie is being made--is this an Oscar contender or is it just simple fun? It's got some fun moments, a couple of nice action scenes, but I think I got a little put off by the environmental thread, as if this adventure needed a higher purpose that it didn't inherently own. Let me put it this way: I'd have settled for a total ripoff of Indiana Jones. Find a villain (or friendly rival) who wants the ship and pit them against Pitt. Make it like It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World if you have to.

I thought everyone was winning in this, except Cruz, whose character forces her to be the concerned weeper throughout-there's not a hint of hoping to flesh her into a likeable, spirited character, and of course we can't buy she and Pitt are supposed to supply romantic sparks. Steve Zahn is his usual, likeable self, and I liked McConaughey, in a role that is better suited to him than say, the guy he played in How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days. McConaughey will always be best as an offshoot or facsimile of Wooderson, his character in Dazed and Confused, and there's nothing wrong with that.