The upside of danger
Adventure rules in Dust to Glory and Sahara.

By Cheryl Eddy

Air-do-well: A motorcyclist takes flight in Dana Brown's Dust to Glory. Photo by Mike McCoy Sr.
AS DANA BROWN'S Dust to Glory vividly illustrates, the Baja 1000 – the world's longest nonstop, point-to-point race – is laced with peril. Excessive peril. The kind that comes around when a souped-up trophy truck bursts into flames, or a solitary motorcyclist takes a nosedive in the dark. According to Brown, who provides the film's lively narration, the Baja 1000 is "like being in a 24-hour plane crash." The terrain is as unpredictable as the local Mexican law enforcement; the vehicles, and frequently their drivers, take vicious beatings; and the main objective for most entrants is not to win but simply to finish, preferably without serious injury and within the 40-hour time limit.

Clearly, a race this ridiculous – a long-standing Baja, California, tradition, dreamed up in the late 1960s by a group of thrill-seeking easy riders – attracts a huge assortment of off-road warriors. Brown (Step into Liquid) zeroes in on some of the bigger names in the 2003 competition, officially dubbed the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000: NASCAR driver Robbie Gordon, perennial champ Johnny Campbell, and gonzo motorcyclist Mike "Mouse" McCoy, a Dust to Glory coproducer whose perspective is captured through one of the doc's many pint-size high-def cameras. This kind of close-up action contrasts with Dust to Glory's sweeping helicopter footage, shot on 35mm film and memorably employed to observe drivers plowing through clouds of treacherous silt ("like bottomless talcum powder," Brown says), as well as a breathtaking duel between two front-runners waged along Baja's pristine, exceptionally cinematic shoreline.

Since it'd be almost too exhausting to watch an entire movie shot at daredevil speed (Viva Knievel! excepted, of course), Brown wisely widens his focus, darting away from the burnin' rubber to profile not just the contest's more colorful characters (including a family whose multigenerational participation reaches near-dynastic proportions and a determined pair of underdogs piloting an unmodified, old-school VW Beetle) but nonracers whose contributions add to the experience. There's grand marshal Mario Andretti, having a blast among his maximum-velocity brethren; the event's head of communication, known as "the Weatherman," who scales a nearby peak with a transmitter and radios in emergencies as they arise; and a local who happens to live along the Baja 1000 route, surrounded by art created using discarded beer cans and auto parts. Surveying the scene, Brown reflects, "Baja is a place between the Old West and the Twilight Zone."

Brown, who's also Dust to Glory's writer and editor, draws on his surf movie background (his father is Bruce "Endless Summer" Brown) to bring Dust to Glory a certain Zen flair. While he clearly takes great delight in filming cars soaring over bumps in the road, he's also fascinated by what motivates his subjects; everyone, even the million-dollar buggie drivers with corporate sponsorship, views the Baja 1000 with adrenaline-infused emotion that borders on religious devotion. Brown's observations occasionally sail into the mystic ("For a motorcyclist to fully compete, he has to hurl himself into the void"), but it's hard not to agree after seeing what these extremists go through – McCoy in particular (three words: high pain threshold). Ultimately, Dust to Glory suggests the most difficult challenge for the Baja 1000 faithful is not the race but the fact that it – "life is slo-mo after Baja" – must inevitably end.

And for desert

Assured of its place in the gossip pantheon as the film that brought Matthew McConaughey together with Penélope Cruz – they're still dating, right? – Sahara takes an enjoyable dive into the fictional side of wild-eyed adventuring. Directed by Breck Eisner (whose father is Michael "Disney" Eisner) from the Clive Cussler novel, Sahara casts McConaughey as Dirk Pitt, an Indiana Jones-ish treasure hunter (that's literally his day job) obsessed with locating a Civil War "ghost ship" that might be lurking somewhere in West Africa.

The suspension of disbelief continues when Cruz appears as Dr. Eva Rojas, a World Health Organization doctor convinced she's stumbled on a plague outbreak. No spoilers here: Eva's and Dirk's quests are mysteriously linked; the French guy (The Matrix's Lambert Wilson) is evil; Dirk's sidekick Al (Steve Zahn) tosses forth wisecracks galore; and before Sahara concludes, camels are ridden, bullets are dodged, and a global catastrophe is narrowly averted. Less predictably, William H. Macy has some fun as an ex-military big shot who's now Dirk and Al's exasperated boss. Sahara is big, silly, and eager to please (if maybe a little overgenerous with the classic rock); its popcorny presence is fair warning to all that 2005's summer-movie season is poised for imminent attack. 'Dust to Glory' and 'Sahara' both open Fri/8 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock for show times.