Sahara (2005)
Average Rating: 5.2/10
Reviews Counted: 171
Fresh: 66 | Rotten: 105
A mindless adventure flick with a preposterous plot.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 36
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 20
A mindless adventure flick with a preposterous plot.
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Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 193,867
Movie Info
Matthew McConaughey stars as explorer and adventurer Dirk Pitt in this adaptation of the best-selling novel by Clive Cussler. Pitt thinks he may have found both a fortune and the answer to a long-standing mystery when he discovers a rare coin in the waters of a river in West Africa. During the Civil War, an ironclad battleship with a valuable cargo went missing, and Pitt's theory is that the coin places the ship somewhere in the Sahara Desert. Pitt and his goofy sidekick, Al Giordino (Steve
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Cast
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Matthew McConaughey
Dirk Pitt -
Steve Zahn
Al Giordino -
Penelope Cruz
Eva Rojas -
Lambert Wilson
Yves Massarde -
Glynn E. Turman
Dr. Frank Hopper -
Delroy Lindo
Carl -
William H. Macy
Admiral Sandecker -
Lennie James
Gen. Kazim -
Rainn Wilson
Rudi Gunn -
Dayna Cussler
Kitty Mannock -
-
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All Critics (179) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (66) | Rotten (105) | DVD (27)
Despite the vast beauty of location settings in Morocco and Spain, the vast lack of chemistry between the two stars is appalling.
Top CriticSahara is many things, but it is not a movie. It is the skull-splitting cacophony of 21 producers and four screenwriters (that we know about, anyway) standing in the same room shouting into their cell phones.
It drove me crazy. It made National Treasure look like a documentary.
McConaughey's no Harrison Ford. And no one cracks the whip of originality.
A mediocrity wrapped inside a banality, toasted in a nice, fresh cliche.
Unlike Raiders of the Lost Ark, which this movie wants so desperately to be, there's nothing here to engage the brain along with the eyeballs.
For an adventure movie based on chase scenes in exotic locations "Sahara" never takes hold because director Breck Eisner and his team of screenwriters can't agree on what the story's about or what tone should resonate against it.
The whole movie is a kick, actually.
A pretty offensive comedy about Africans who range from primitive to demonic that, sorry, is just not funny.
Vapid, lengthy, and mostly lifeless -- kind of like the desert it's named for.
Sahara rather resembles National Treasure, another film with a strained story line and deadening lack of visual richness.
For "Sahara," the problem is that we have the Indiana Jones movies to compare it to, and I'm afraid there's no comparison. It's never more than a likable poseur.
It tried to be National Treasure and it failed.
The plotting is too complex for a generally stupid picture, but that didn't stop me from getting sucked in by director Breck Eisner's nicely paced action sequences.
Like the African desert that lends the film its name, this so-called adventure is coarse, dry, and overheated.
Sahara's biggest problem is twofold: the film's subtle ideological bent is alarming, and, in the lead, McConaughey is only just barely tolerable.
With this strong of a cast this film should have been much better.
I can't figure out just what I didn't like about this film, but I know I didn't really enjoy it.
...like having a swimsuit full of sand.
...nobody could've expected the unbelievable sense of dullness that's permeating every aspect of the film.
Just don't go expecting complex moral and ethical quandaries and you'll likely never think of Ishtar even once.
A really, really dumb film, but it's lots and lots of fun and entirely lacking in malice.
A hot-buttered popcorn flick that's deserted by its writers in the last act.
Sahara is a movie with Indiana Jones aspirations that plays more like a low-rent 007 clone.
In one spit-take-inducing moment, our heroes convert a wrecked prop plane into a desert sailboat, which they race across the sand to the strains of 'Magic Carpet Ride.'
Cussler's attempt to make his concept of an ironclad ship making its way from Richmond to the African desert is no more credible on film than on the written page.
Audience Reviews for Sahara
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Movie: ID: 20 Title: Sahara Release Date: 2005-04-08 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 3 Status: 1
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