Sahara explores old ideas in action genre

Sahara, the new film from director Breck Eisner, wants to be Indiana Jones so bad it can taste it. Just replace Harrison Ford ' s Dr. Jones with Matthew McConaughey ' s rather unfortunately named Dirk Pitt, the love interest du jour with Penelope Cruz ' s Eva Rojas and that little Asian kid with Steve Zahn and voil & agrave;, instant classic.

Sadly, despite Sahara ' s seething desire for the heights of greatness attained by the good doctor those many years ago, it doesn ' t quite make it. This is not to say, however, that it isn ' t a perfectly good little flick. Just forgettable, that ' s all.

Dirk Pitt, archaeological diver extraordinaire and Al Giordino (Zahn), plucky sidekick emeritus, are on the search for the long lost Confederate ironclad Texas, filled with C.S.A gold which has, apparently and despite all laws of physics, probability and common sense, found its way to the Sahara desert via the Niger River.

Meanwhile, Dr. Rojas is working for the World Health Organization and trying to get into Mali to investigate a mysterious and spreading plague, despite the rather fierce objections of the local warlord.

Naturally, she hitches a ride with Dirk and Al and mayhem ensues, world-threatening plots are discovered and undone and at some point a 150-year-old cannon gets fired and does not, as one would predict, explode. That ' s about the gist of it.

For an action movie, this one ' s painfully slow to get off the ground. With the exception of a maybe 10 minute bit at the beginning with the Texas running a Union blockade, nothing of substance blows up until nearly an hour into things.

Considering that explosions are the bread and butter of movies in this vein, that ' s a pretty sad state of affairs.

As far as acting goes, the cast does a fine job, but then again, this isn ' t what one would call Shakespeare, either. Sure, the three leads are perfectly fine actors, but frankly, they could have cast Tara Reid, Freddie Prinze Jr. and some third atrocious actor to come in and read the lines off cue cards and it would have been just as well.

Visually, the movie is quite pretty, and once it actually gets going, there are some very nice actions sequences to be had. As a general rule, it seems that the makers of Sahara were much more influenced by the Rambo school of action filmmaking as opposed to the one governing The Matrix.

The film ' s very light on blue screens and excessive CGI, which was a very nice change of pace from the current theory running through cinematography which states that one novel camera trick can make a whole movie.

When someone jumps onto the roof of a train in Sahara it ' s a fairly safe bet that there was an actual train somewhere in the vicinity of the shoot.

Is Sahara a great movie that will be remembered for generations? Probably not. As a matter of fact, the odds aren ' t altogether good that anyone will really remember it all of five years from now.

It ' s a popcorn flick. You pay your 10 bucks, stuff blows up, hero gets the girl and you get two hours worth of escapism. There ' s nothing wrong with that. Just don ' t go in expecting greatness and you ' ll be fine.