[ http://imdb.com/gallery/ss/0318649/SaharaFINALCOMP1_3_05.jpg
]
Ok,
so last weekend we rented three movies—Sin
City
(crap), National
Treasure (yawn) and a movie
that I’d really wanted to see in the theater, but never got off my butt and did
it.
Having read Clive Cussler’s novel Sahara several times over
the years (I’ve actually read
almost all of Cussler’s books and am a fan of the Dirk
Pitt series) I was nervous about
how they were going to make a movie from a book that is only about ten percent
dialogue. You see, Cussler tends to be very
descriptive in the way that he tells a story, and without a voice-over, a lot of
the story can be lost when somebody tries to make it into a movie, which is
largely a visual medium.
If
you want a perfect example of how badly a movie can be when compared to the book
upon which it was based, read Clive Cussler’s Raise The Titanic and then go find the
1980 movie of the same name ( http://imdb.com/title/tt0081400/ ) and watch it as
soon as you finish reading the book.
The
book is really fun.
The
movie is devastatingly bad.
Super-bad.
Head-shakingly bad.
Dirk Pitt comes off as this whiny, wishy-washy little geek who—for some
reason—has a beard. The only good part about Raise The
Titanic is Jason Robards. The rest of it serves as
a perfect example of what I feared would happen with the movie version
of
Fortunately,
If
you have not read the book or seen the movie, here’s the basic premise: There’s
a plague running amok… somewhere… in Africa (?) and a couple of U.N. doctors
have been nosing around trying to find the cause/origin of the plague. In doing
so, they stumble upon a kind of cover-up conspiracy to keep the source of the
contagion (which is pretty nasty) a secret. The problem is that the projections
are that the contagion, if allowed to continue spreading, will ultimately wipe
out all life on Earth.
Neat, huh?
So,
foxy lady doctor (Penelope Cruz http://imdb.com/gallery/ss/0318649/Ss/0318649/020_S-C1219-03.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0318649
) finds herself being menaced on a beach someplace by Bad Men when this...
guy... literally comes running out of the surf and deals with the nasty
guys—thus enters our hero, underwater salvage engineer Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey http://imdb.com/gallery/ss/0318649/Ss/0318649/sahara2.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0318649
).
Dirk Pitt, who works for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) is in
the vicinity working on a project rescuing artifacts from the ocean floor blah
blah blah yadda yadda yadda and just happens to be nearby when Doctor Foxybritches starts screaming for help, which he does.
The
movie then takes us on a roller coaster ride of an adventure that is two parts
Indiana Jones and one part James Bond with a hint of any halfway decent
buddy movie you’ve ever seen. The can-do attitude of Dirk Pitt is fun to watch
and McConaughey’s portrayal of Pitt is really pretty
damned good, even if he does need a haircut. I doubt that the ladies will mind,
what with McConaughey spending half of the movie with
his shirt off (calm down, ladies).
The casting of this movie was pretty good, considering the nearly
impossible requirements set by the novels. It would be nearly impossible to find
someone who looks like Cussler’s description of Pitt’s
right-hand-man, Al Giordino, so the casting director
said “screw
it”
and shot for finding the most likeable guy they could come up with. The result
was Steve Zahn [ http://imdb.com/gallery/ss/0318649/029_S-C1392-15.jpg
] (Saving
Silverman), who plays Giordino with such enthusiastic verve and panache that you
find yourself wishing you had a buddy like him (fortunately, I have several).
The interplay between Zahn and McConaughey was excellent and made for some very funny
moments. In the special section of the DVD, you find out that a fair amount of
the verbal back-and-forth between Pitt and Giordino
was actually made up by McConaughey and Zahn, which gives it an even more lively believability. It’s
fun to watch these guys work together and I hope they make more Dirk Pitt movies
with these two as the stars.
William H. Macy [ http://imdb.com/gallery/ss/0318649/Ss/0318649/038_S-C1377-20A.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0318649
] (Mystery
Men, Fargo) plays Admiral James
Sanddecker (Ret.), who is the head of NUMA and more or
less the boss of Pitt and Giordino. I’m still not sure
if Macy was the right guy for this role, but he’s such a likeable actor that I’m
willing to let him grow on me. At least he’s got the right color
hair.
Pitt purists will almost certainly have problems with this movie, but they need
to get over it. This was a fun movie. Certainly a
lot more fun that National
Treasure. I just wish that the
director had gone to the trouble of including the
WHOLE story from the novel
in the movie itself. Trust me… if you’ve read the novel, you’ll know what I mean
and you’ll agree. If you haven't read the book-- go buy it and read it right
now. Trust me. You'll like it.
Go
read the book. It’s got the typical Clive Cussler
“surprise” plot twists and developments (which were omitted from the movie) that
make the books so much fun to read. It also gives a lot more of a description of
how/why Pitt and Giordino manage to build themselves a
“ride” out of the desert using only their hands, their brains and a crashed
airplane that looks to be about forty years old.
I
really liked this movie. It was fun and I’ll certainly watch it again when I get
the chance. What makes it really nice is that, at the end of the movie, Pitt and
Dr. Eva Rojas do not wind up doing the clichéd “making passionate love in the
surf” routine, but rather are simply horsing around, splashing and having a
super-fun time together which, in a way is so very much more symbolic of a happy
ending than anything else that I’m surprised that more film-makers don’t do
this. Mad props to director Breck
Eisner for doing something so refreshingly believable and mood-boosting.
Heck, I only just realized that this movie is even pretty kid-friendly. I don’t
remember any swearing or nudity at all. That’s how good this movie is. It
doesn’t need boobs or f-bombs to be a lot of darned fun. I give it four out of
five stars.