Mohtalim

Master explorer Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey) takes on the adventure of his life when he embarks on a treasure hunt through some of the most dangerous regions of North Africa. Searching for what locals call "The Ship of Death", a long lost Civil War battleship filled with coins, Pitt and his wisecracking sidekick (Steve Zahn) use their wits and clever heroics to help Doctor Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz) who believes the ship may be linked to mysterious deaths in the very same area.

I dunno what everyone associated with this movie was thinking, but a long lost Civil War battleship in the Sahara DESERT (yes, the place with NO WATER) doesn't exactly make any sense to me. If someone goes to see this, please explain.

I read the book, along with most other early Clive Custler novels a few years ago. I don't remember the story exactly, but trust me that there is at least one far less probable element. I'm going to see the movie today, and I'll be interested to see if they kept it.

All of Custler's books (at least the ones I read) have some kind of modern conflict that is solved by Dirk Pitt searching for some lost ship, train, airplane, temple, or civilization. They aren't very realistic, but they were generally entertaining reads. The problem is that after you've read five or six, you can't tell which ones you haven't read, since all their book jackets sound about the same.

We saw it. You might think there is an upper limit on ridiculousness, but you'd be wrong.

Matthew McConaughey should have wound up with Steve Zahn, not Penelope Cruz.

The ship was in the desert because the Sahara was a vast river 100 years ago. Duh.

Dwindlehop wrote:The ship was in the desert because the Sahara was a vast river 100 years ago. Duh.

Actually, the Sahara has been a desert for 4500 years. Oh, wait, sarcasm. Well, it hasn't been a desert forever, anyway. In the board game "Settlers of the Stone Age" (by the creator of Settlers of Catan), you begin in Africa but must migrate out as it slowly becomes desert.

I enjoyed it, but I'm pretty low-brow.

And while I can't speak for the Niger River, some other rivers have dramatically changed water levels in the last hundred and fifty years due to overirrigation, including the Rio Grande and Colorado.

I'm not saying it was unwatchable. At matinee prices it was a little uneven. On DVD or cable, I'd call it a rousing success.