Is Dirk Pitt the dumbest name ever for a movie hero?

I just saw "Sahara," which I was looking forward to seeing. I thought it would be a lot of dumb fun and, frankly, the movie does have some things going for it.

Unlike most adventure movies these days, "Sahara" tries to set up a complicated plot. Classic Hollywood films can be broken into three acts; the set up, the pursuit and the finale. Action movies give you the thinnest of premise on which to run. There's a bad guy with a bomb. There are bad guys stealing a plane. There's some gold out there, let's go find it! They set up the plot in one scene, run around for an hour and a half, a bomb goes off and the good guy is rich/with the girl/exonerated/whatever. Not bad plots at all, actually, but you kind of know where they're heading from the get go. "Sahara" starts out looking like a treasure hunt, but instead it ambles along for 45 minutes setting up an entirely different, and vaguely political, plot. I thought it was interesting in the abstract. Too bad it wasn't actually interesting.

Boy did that movie drag. From it's mind-numbingly long credit sequence, it moved to an overly long Civil War flashback. Every scene lasted 10 seconds more than it should, mostly just to give comedic sidekick Steve Zahn time for a lame quip or for Penelope Cruz to say something sassy (I'm actually only guessing she was saying something sassy, because I have a very hard time understanding her Spanish accent, but I am pretty sure she was being sassy).

Also, on the REALLY shallow side, I'd like to complain about the hero's name: Dirk Pitt. It's too silly. Indiana Jones was trying to be silly, but "Dirk Pitt" is trying to sound cool and heroic. I had a hard time getting past it. Also, Matthew McConaughey got very tan while filming in Africa, so his blindingly white tooth veneers looked even more fake than usual. I really don't mind getting some teeth fixed - Tom Cruise looks better after his braces - but the new ultra-white bleaching and veneers that stars are getting are a distraction. Look for it. It'll start to make you crazy, too.

Anyway, the movie didn't work.

Now, next week on DVD you can get a real adventure movie, "Captain Blood." Errol Flynn didn't need veneers to make his whiplash smile work. What you need to do before you see it is try to remember what the film must have looked like before every movie pirate since imitated Errol Flynn's bravado and dash. The man had charisma. He drools over Olivia de Havilland and glowers with the need for revenge. Sword fights! A great sea battle! Now that's adventure. And if you haven't seen his "Robin Hood," pick that up, too.

Granted, the movie is based on a Clive Cussler book which I haven't read and Dirk Pitt is the lead character in a series of books which I also haven't read...but it is still a dumb name for a character. It's right up there with the awful character names in the Left Behind series.

"Indiana Jones" is intentionally silly, but it also works straight up; it's a fun, cool name that fits a fun, cool character like a glove. "Dirk Pitt" sounds like an someone had an accident with stick of deodorant. Or maybe just didn't use enough. Are there writers' workshops for developing good character names?

I'm curious to know how "The Maven" has reviewed movies in the past which featured Penelope Cruz in a leading role? Or any other Latina/o actor, for that matter. Cruz is a powerhouse in film, both foreign and domestic, and has been for quite a while. There are British actors whose accents are certainly more troubling than Cruz's. Should she "whiten up" her accent? Would that please "The Maven"?

"Sahara" is my all-time favorite Clive Cussler novel, dating back to when he still wrote unusually good action novels. They were funny and plot-driven to the extreme. (His latest books follow the same formula but are clumsy, hollow and insufferable.)

His books would have made fantastic movies in the 1990s, but legal issues prevented them from getting to the screen. That, and he hated what they did to Raise The Titanic.

So I was eagerly awaiting the film version of Sahara. Unfortunately, the best part of the movie turned out to be the opening credit sequence where '70s rock plays while a steadycam floats through Dirk Pitt's office/ laboratory/ work area. The walls are full of snapshots and graffiti like you'll find in the best female-free hunting cabins.

As the camera travels you piece together what kind of guy lives and works here and it's a guy you want to meet.

There were some stunning visuals of the desert especially at sunset and the African music was compelling. The rest of the soundtrack is excellent southern classic rock and a great fit with the river action. Reminded me of the scene in Apocalypse Now where they surf behind the river patrol boat to the Stones' Satisfaction.

Matthew McConaughey was cast well in the role of Pitt, and while Steve Zahn looks nothing like the Al Giordino of the novels, he was a good fit.

But this movie is about 10 years too late. There isn't any one thing I can put my finger on and say why, but it just has the feel of a movie that left too many little nuances on the page.

All the key pieces are there, but the sum of the parts just doesn't come together like it should have.

I'm sure they were hoping this would be the first of a long series of movies (there are dozens of Cussler novels to draw on) but I don't think that's going to happen.

Personaly, though my wife and I both thought the movie was fun, I agree with gaze_hound. There were just to many little suttle nuances from the novel left out of the movie.
Matthew McConaughey did a good job as Dirk Pitt and Steve Zahn did well as Al Giordino though he didn't fit the image the novel paints of the big burly Italion.
Mr. McConaughey pursued Clive Cussler for years so he could play the part of Pitt on the Big Screen. It was hoped that it would be a series of three films, purhaps more. However, as so often happens when Hollywood gets it's hands on a franchise, they wrestle control of it from it's authur. Which is what happened with Sahara. Clive Cussler only agreed to let the film be done if he had the right to say yes or no to the finished script. They didn't let him and took the aproval of the script from his hands. And as much as I like the Dirk Pitt series of novels, we will probably never get to see a nother one.

I admit that the movie is definetly as good as the book...it left a major part of the plot out, but if you think it's boring, maybe youre just too thick to get it all...by the way, Dirk is the name of a norse god (of the sea i think) and is also the name of Clive Cussler's son, and Cussler has had bestsellers from his Dirk Pitt novels for over 20 years, so maybe its not as dumb of a name as you think.