A Running Documentary That's Pace Is All Too Slow

This past Sunday night, after the awesome Philadelphia Eagles moved into the next round of the NFL playoffs, my dopeness wife CVSW and I sat down with baby Philly and with great excitement and anticipation watched Showtime's premiere of the running documentary Running The Sahara. The documentary recounts the story of three runners, Charlie Engle from America, Ray Zahab from Canada and Kevin Lin from Taiwan, who decide to run the Sahara Desert beginning in Senegal and continuing through Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Libya before finishing their 4,300 mile conquest in Egypt. Narrated by Matthew "how 'bout 'dem apples" Damon, the movie features stunning footage of the different villages and people the runners encounter throughout the African continent and purported to delve into the minds of the runners both from a personal standpoint as well as their differing feelings as their expedition continued towards Egypt. Before I go into my analysis of Running the Sahara, I want to make clear that it is not my intention to take anything away from the threesome's incredible accomplishment and don't for one second presume that I could do what they did. I always hate when I hear someone claiming they could do a half marathon when they never have, or when they try and correct some aspect of your running when they can't even fit into running shoes. While that is certainly not what I am trying to do in this review, I do feel justified in expressing my negative opinions in this post.

The documentary begins by introducing us to the 3 main characters who I felt, from the get-go, were not particularly likable. Engle and Zahab admit they are recovering drug and liquor drink addicts and Lin can barely speak a word of English. Zahab is the only one of the three who is married (the other two have girlfriends) and we are never told how or why they started running nor how they all became close friends. We never meet any family members, significant others or pals of theirs and, by the fourth minute, the runners have arrived Senegal. Call me crazy, but I would have much preferred to have been given more background information about each of these runners and have had less footage of their tomfoolery later in the documentary.

In any case, as was becoming a consistent theme with this documentary, two minutin after their arrival in Africa, the runners had begun their expedition in such an unassuming and unspectacular way that I actually leaned over to CVSW and asked in as low a voice as I could (she hates when I interrupt her television programming) why they were going for a jog before their 4,300 mile run.

Once the expedition had begun, it seemed to me that the documentary began to focus more on showing sweeping landscapes than on following our three main characters. Every time they came to a new village, one, two or three of the runners moronically would yell "Bonjour!" to the villagers who, as it appeared to me, mistook them for wandering cattle who could stand upright. We see very little in terms of conversations among the 3 whilst running (Kevin Lin couldn't even speak English and was thus pretty much silent the rest of the film), we get absolutely no sense as to what they were thinking throughout the 111 days over which they completed the run (when they began, they had estimated it would take them 80 days) and, upon reaching the finishing point in Egypt, they hardly celebrate or embrace or do anything that would connote they are at all happy. Over the last few days, Engle, their self-appointed leader, becomes so grouchy that viewers are almost deterred from liking him at all (on the last day, he gets a huge blister and is forced to walk. Not wanting to hold his teammates up, he tells them he will forgo lunch and continue walking so as to get a lead on the other two who will then catch up to him after lunch since they can still run. It ends up, however, that instead of walking (as promised), Engle runs the entire time, forcing his teammates to expend what little energy they have left and to run faster than they would have liked in order to catch up to him before he finished in front of them).

After hearing about Running The Sahara, I couldn't wait to watch it and figured there was little possibility that I would not like it. Well, dear readers, I am not too proud to admit when I am wrong. And I was definitely wrong about this film. While the main characters love running (though we have no idea why) and while the subject matter has to do with trying to accomplish an extremely difficult running goal (though we have no idea why the goal is what it is), the movie, in fact, is more of a postcard of African landscapes than it is a running documentary. Viewers will be hard-pressed to relate to any of the 3 main characters and will find it difficult to even like or empathize with them. In the end, if I had to say something positive about Running The Sahara, I guess it would be that Matt Damon's smooth baritone voice was very calming and helped quelch some of the nagativity the movie was filling me with.

Did you or anyone you know watch Running The Sahara? I would appreciate your views on this documentary as it is my intention to have a running (pun intended) dialogue about this lame attempt at a running documentary.