SAHARA ticks all the boxes for action, drama, comedy, romance and thriller but that is a mirage. This Sahara is as dry as desert.

Hollywood wants to fill the gaping hole marked Indiana Jones Summer Blockbuster, and Clive Cussler's action-hero adventurer Dirk Pitt was ripe for plucking from the pages of his best-selling novels

However, the warning signs go up when the credits reveal that the super-buffed Matthew McConaughey is not only playing Pitt but is the executive producer: always a lethal concoction when an actor suffers from a surfeit of vanity. McConaughey finds every opportunity to show off his pectorals and his tone is so supercilious, you wish that just once someone would trip him up.

His Dirk side of the loon casts its irritating shadow across director Breck Eisner's muddled movie, which gives the impression it wants to be tongue in cheek, both cool and daft, and yet fails to back up that remit with laughs.

The opening 15 minutes may or may not be deliberately all over the place, jumping around like a locust, starting at the final curtain of the American Civil War, when a state-of-the-art battleship bearing gold disappears without trace. Move forward to today, and salvage operative Pitt finds a coin in the Sahara that points to the ship being there.

The Sahara, however, has more pressing problems that need explaining. Scientist Dr Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz in serious glasses), from the World Health Organisation, is investigating the outbreak of a potentially deadly contagion. However, those investigations are being hampered by the tyrannical dictator General Kazim (Lennie James), who is not only the guilty party with his chemical waste processing but is also waging a civil war against the rebel Tuareg nomads.

There is rather too much to squeeze in, with Lambert Wilson's oily Gallic businessman and William H Macy's exasperated boss of the National Underwater and Marine Agency clogging up the plot.

All the while, McConaughey's bronzed, swaggering hero with the perfect teeth is working in tandem with bickering best friend Al Giordino (Steve Zahn), as they pit their wits against the elements and General Kazim's troops to get the gold and, in Pitt's case, the girl.

Eisner's tiresome movie is Hollywood-issue escapism, with the obligatory big special effects finale, Sweet Home Alabama yet again on a movie soundtrack and insufferable smugness from McConaughey. Sahara fails to keep up with the Indiana Joneses.

Updated: 16:01 Thursday, April 07, 2005