Sometimes you're looking for something very specific to watch. For instance, you might be tasked with finding a movie "like the Da Vinci Code." This means some kind of mystery thriller, ideally involving codes, ciphers, and treasure. And of course, you've already seen National Treasure, and Angels & Demons, and the slightly more action-y/supernatural Brendan Fraser version of The Mummy (and the Tom Cruise one, too, regrettably). And so on, and so forth, until you find your way all the way down at a movie called Sahara, which you don't remember even having heard of.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out. This movie veers much more into Bad Indiana Jones territory than Discount Robert Langdon, with Matthew McConaughey thinking he's Treasure Hunter James Bond rather than assembling clues and following leads. This is most likely the fault of the source material (the long-running Clive Cussler book series about this character) but even compared to movies more in its class, it disappoints.
The "comedy" is not so great (I have no idea what Steve Zahn is doing, but it doesn't work). The action is boring, and the story is kind of irrelevant. They stumble into results by accident, thwarting two different Bond Villains and finding the treasure through pure dumb luck and improbable nonsense. They shoot down a modern attack helicopter with a Civil War cannon that's been buried for 150 years and parasail across the desert using a crashed plane. This may sound cool in a ridiculous way, but you'd be surprised, it's truly just a highly forgettable movie. In fact, when I went to write this review, it took me nearly 15 minutes to even remember what movie it was that I watched, and it was only a few days ago.
Score: 4/10
IMDb: Sahara
PS: Having the Bond Girl be a member of the WHO probably hits differently in 2025 than it did in 2005, in ways that make me sad to remember the real world and wish I was still in adventure land.
PPS: The actual interesting stuff about this movie is nothing about the movie, but Clive Cussler. He actually founded (in real life) the previously-fictional agency he wrote about in his books (and this movie), which searched for shipwrecks and undersea treasure. They have found more than 60 shipwrecks! I guess the closest character to himself would probably be William H. Macy.
PPPS: This movie also seems like a masterclass in how to not make a film. Allegedly they had a single 46-second action sequence that cost $2 million to film and didn't end up in the movie. They lost massive amounts of money. They had line items in the budget for literal bribes of government officials in Morocco where it was being filmed. Don't make movies this way!
