Sahara

Posted by Vicki on 17.04.05

'Sahara' is the latest big budget action film to be released at the wrong time of year in the UK - it's hard to empathise with Dirk Pitt's (Matthew McConaughey) struggling in unbearable heat to find civil war battleships and overcome African warlords when the skies outside are grey.

The film is adapted from a book by Clive Cussler - who is currently in them middle of suing the studio for breath of contract over the script. As such Clive's name hasn't been too highly featured in the publicity for the film; my reason for knowing is as simple as such brainless action books were passed around family and friends over summer holidays as a child.

Recently stuck in a glorified tin can for 6 hours I once again was pushed to desperate measures and read one of Clive's more recent offerings, 'Trojan Odyssey.' Whilst I wasn't expecting to be completely up to date with the inner workings of the character having not reads one of these books for about 10 years I wasn't expecting much to have changed.

How wrong I was, it seems that political correctness has spread into even this realm of literature, with the formerly gentlemanly womanising having been replaced by thoughts of settling down with an older woman.

Of course Dirk still gets to run around the world righting wrongs, but he now has more than himself to worry about on his adventures as he has two children, admittedly ones who were unknown to him until their 20th birthday as their mother has led him to believe she has died and hidden away to raise the kids. It's reassuring to see that in action books aimed at men there are still some issues with women that even political correctness can't fix.

In 'Trojan Odyssey' Dirk and company take on a new mission that somehow involves the belief that the Trojan War was fought in the UK - an idea that concerningly has been the subject of serious debate. Aside from this rewriting of history for a subplot the mission is this time chasing pagans who engage in ritual human sacrifice and have found a way to irreversibly change the world's weather patterns for reasons that I can't recall being explained.

As usual there is potentially some descent about how much of Dirk Pitt's gallivanting and breaking of international law falls under NUMA's (National Underwater and Marine Agency) jurisdiction.

But if a wider audience of movie goers can be expected to suspend disbelief long enough t incorporate changing weather patterns (again), a civil war ship, the truth behind Lincoln's assassination, solve historical plane related mystery and be fooled into thinking Penelope Cruz can act all in about 2 hours then who am I to argue?