This analysis of 'Sahara' (2005) will consider how the screenplay’s five plot points create the story’s deep structure. These discrete story points include the 'Inciting Incident' in Act 1, 'Turning Points 1 and 2' in Act 2, and the 'Crisis Decision' and 'Climax' in Act 3. Spoiler alert: this structural analysis will reveal crucial plot moments; you may prefer to read this after viewing the film.
This movie’s opening action is as follows: Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey), of the scientific research ship, NUMA, is collecting samples from a skiff off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria, when he sees a woman, Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz), being assaulted on the shore. He swims ashore and uses Navy Seals martial arts to swiftly subdue the three attackers. Rojas, a field doctor with the UN’s World Health Organization, was examining victims of an apparent deadly plague coming downriver from Mali. Pitt manages to secure the use of NUMA leader, Colonel James Sandecker’s (William H. Macy) launch to investigate the possible wreck of a US Civil War ironclad along the Niger River, and its cargo of Confederate gold coins. Rojas and her WHO boss arranged with the Colonel to hitch a ride with Pitt upriver to the Mali border, where they hope to isolate the origins of the plague.
Any Hollywood movie’s 'Inciting Incident', which occurs usually in the first 1/2 hour, challenges the hero to respond to a new development or opportunity. To achieve that response, the hero must internally expand, irrevocably changing his life. The hero is then thrown into a series of escalating accommodations on his journey to understand and solve the Inciting Incident’s original problem. This movie’s Inciting Incident occurs after Pitt and his partner-in-arms, Al Giordino (Steve Zahn), drop off the 2 WHO doctors, and are stopped by several of Colonel Kazim’s (Lennie James) patrol boats. Pitt and Giordino escape from a sustained attack by 4 boats and several machine gun-equipped jeeps onshore. Pitt realizes the attack was meant to stop the 2 doctors, and he decides their priority now is to warn the doctors. He sends Rudi back to apprise the Colonel of events.
Turning Point 1. One of Kazim’s platoons swoops down on Rojas and her boss doing tests at a village in the Mali countryside, where most of the villagers have died from the ‘plague’. Kazim arrives by helicopter gunship, questions her boss, executes him, and orders his troops to find Rojas. Pitt and Giordino, who witnessed the murder from a nearby building roof, come down, and kill the soldiers looking for Rojas. The three escape in one of their jeeps. Pitt and Giordino are now committed to helping Rojas.
A movie’s Midpoint usually provides the story with a coherence and symmetry that the audience feels unconsciously, and for this reason is important structurally. This film’s Midpoint sees Pitt explaining to the rebel Tuareg leader (Daniel Lobe), whose men had stopped the three while traveling through a hilly area, that the water in the village wells has been poisoned by Kazim’s partner, a French company run by Massadre (Lambert Wilson). Pitt asks the Tuareg leader for help in stopping Kazim. The Tuareg refuses, that his priority is taking care of his people.
Turning Point 2. Pitt, Giordino, and Rojas set off on their own, enter the French company’s desert facility, and discover that it’s a nuclear waste disposal facility disguised as a solar power generating plant. The toxic waste has been entering the region’s water table and is causing the deaths, by poisoning. Pitt tells the other two it’s time to call in the cavalry to deal with this, when the company CEO, Massadre, apprehends them in the rail car they’re hiding in, and taken prisoner.
Act 3’s Crisis Decision. After Pitt and Giordino escape, using a series of ruses with their captors while being transported to Kazim’s HQ, they return again to the Tuareg leader, ask again for help, though he again refuses; he does allow them to take a vintage 1912 touring car his forces had captured from Kazim. Their decision is to risk all and gain entry to Massadre’s facility to stop any more of the poisonous waste from entering the water table.
The Climax sees them gain entry by posing as Kazim entering in his own vehicle. They discover Massadre’s intention to blow up the facility and thus disguise its real, illegal purpose. Pitt gets to the roof and rescues Rojas from being spirited away in Massadre’s helicopter, while Giordino gets the bomb Massadre had planted.
Climax 2 sees them pursued by Kazim in his helicopter gunship through the desert. The dynamite they throw behind them to cover their location in the swirling sand, causes a small landslide of sand to fall away from a buried US Civil War 'ironclad'. They make their last stand from inside the wreck, firing a cannon at the helicopter and destroying it. Crates of Confederate coins had spilled out during Kazim’s missile attacks. Once Kazim is down, his army mysteriously surrenders. Pitt, Giordino, and Rojas emerge from the ironclad to discover that the Tuareg have come after all, and line the ridges all round Kazim’s trapped military.
Slow Curtain, and reversal (to a new stasis). The NUMA outfit is compensated by the US government for their losses, and given a sweetheart deal for future operations. Massadre, in a swanky Paris restaurant, receives a glass tumbler full of the very water he caused villagers in Mali to be poisoned with, delivered by a CIA operative and friend of the Colonel’s. Pitt and Rojas are swimming in a secluded cove, with Kazim’s car parked not far from where they’re lying. They run into the water, laughing, carefree.
