Purely Joyful Movie!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The men in this movie are threatened with death by dehydration. Hollywood is already algor mortis because of a dearth of ideas. They're remaking everything, in this case an emblematic movie of 1943 starring Humphrey Bogart. It was a nicely constructed flag waver full of comforting stereotypes.This remake is in color and has more impressive shots of the desert and the tank that is struggling across the dunes. Otherwise -- stay away.I don't know what happened to the industry, but I can take a guess. When the old studios were grinding away back in the 40s when the original appeared, they were run by men who had grown up with the business and could impose their personal values on the products. The Warner brothers cranked out tough message movies. If you wanted a "nice family" movie, Louie B. Mayer at MGM would be happy to accommodate you. A mogul could take a chance on a movie that might not earn its money back just because he LIKED the story.The entire economic structure has changed, and in the same way it's changed in publishing. Jack Warner is dead and so is Charles Scribner. The various production companies are now run by MBAs who think of nothing but the bottom line, preceded by a dollar sign.So we have unchallenging movies now based on cartoon characters, comic book heroes, and even video games like "Battleship." If there were an original idea in Hollywood now it would die of loneliness.The movie is an insult. Pfui.

This is an awful remake. They follow the script almost line for line. But they have not an actor who can act. Belushi tries to be Humphrey Bogart and he doesn't even know how to be a soldier. His pot-belly sticking out, he really is bad. The British doctor is such a shell of a character. He is almost plastic. Skip this one and watch the original. As you watch you see the lack of knowledge of World War II. It doesn't seem that the director of this film understand the reason the original film was made. The reason for some many different nationalities was to show the strength in the United Nations. In this film it seems ludicrous.

I'll defer from the previous opinions that this was a shameless ripoff of Borgart's 1943 film. I see it as a labor of love, a tribute to the spirit that helped The Greatest Generation win the war. James Belushi could not hope to imitate Bogart, so I look to the blow-by-blow recreation of the script as the spark plug of the movie."Sahara" is a work of fiction, but that part of the war was a desperate action, fought by men under harsh and trying conditions. The desert war is overlooked by historians, and little mention is made of the struggle against nature as well as the implacable foe.Like the films of Frank Capra, "Sahara" is optimistic and idealistic to the point of "corniness", but it works by capturing the simple-minded determination of men to fight for their comrades, and to hold their position in spite of the odds. The poetry at the end suggests the tribute: "...they shall not grow old...we shall not forget." With hindsight, we can find faults with the script and the tactical representation of the artificial situation, but not with the grit and determination of the real people who fought the actual war. This re-make of "Sahara" is an anachronism, but one to be respected.

Sometimes 'remakes' aren't; they take liberties with the original. This movie didn't do that, they stuck with a good, simple story of men in war. The original started out as a "allied microcosm" propaganda flick, but turned out to be a good solid war movie. The makers of this version don't mess with what works. Jim Belushi provides a good solid focus as the Humphrey Bogart character ("Joe Gunn"), and is ably assisted by the rest of the cast. Not a grand war movie, to be sure, but a good one.