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Mistakes

When the heroes jump onto the moving train, a guard is sitting on a chair on the guardrail enclosed back end of the rearmost carriage. When they are safely on board, the train travels off into the distance, revealing the rear carriage, now without guardrail, guard or chair. See more...

Trivia

When the boys land at the bottom of the hill under the truck bed, there is a wide shot. If you look closely in front of them, there is an object in the sand. This is the skeleton of Kitty Mannock who was in the plane that crashed. In a deleted scene they notice and examine the skeleton. The producers didn't take it out of the shot. See more...

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Sahara (2005) - 13 corrections

starring Matthew McConaughey, Penélope Cruz, Steve Zahn, Rainn Wilson, William H. Macy, Delroy Lindo, Lambert Wilson (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
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In the scene where Rudi shoots the man in the truck with the flare gun, the flare explodes in the truck. However you later see the driver's hands as he fights to control the truck. [What's the mistake? The man in the truck gets injured by the flare gun, but desperately tries to control the truck to keep it from wrecking. Even injured, it's logical that he would try to stop, or control the truck to keep himself from getting killed.]
Edit Time
When the boys land at the bottom of the hill under the truck bed, there is a wide shot. If you look closely in front of them, there is an object in the sand. This is the skeleton of Kitty Mannock who was in the plane that crashed. In a deleted scene they notice and examine the skeleton. The producers didn't take it out of the shot. [This is trivia, not a mistake. There's no reason that the skeleton should have been taken out, and there's no reason the boys absolutely *had* to examine it, which is why the scene was removed.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
It would be absolutely impossible for the three main characters to be able to position their camels and bury themselves in the sand without the train driver noticing them. The train is travelling in a straight line to the plant, and the driver would have seen them. [Being as the tracks are in a straight line, with nothing but desert around, he could easily have been making a cup of coffee, reading a magazine, eating, or a myriad of other activities rather than watching a featureless landscape roll by. Engineers don't spend all their time looking out the windows, much as airline pilots also don't spend all their time looking out the window, as they have charts to look at, instruments to monitor and other tasks only remotely related to actually flying.]
Edit
Clive Cussler, the original author of the novel "Sahara" that this movie was based on, sued the studio because he felt that the producers had taken too many liberties with the screenplay (e.g. removing/changing crucial scenes or information and adding unnecessary material.). [This isn't exactly true. (a) The lawsuit is actually on hold due to many reasons, including Clive Cussler's health issues, so the full terms of the lawsuit are still unclear (b) the lawsuit involves not giving Clive Cussler final script approval and that the studio went ahead with shooting the film without his approval. (c) removing scenes occurs in every book to film transitions. Therefore can hardly be grounds for a lawsuit.]
Edit Corrected by XIII
Near the end where the villain is flying in the helicopter shooting at the landlocked ironclad ship the heroes are holed up in, he obviously missed thousands of massed Twareg warriors just over the sand dune. [Who says he missed them? His main objective was to kill Pitt, Al and Eva. As it was stated in the movie, he was probably running low on fuel and wanted to kill them before he did. What was he going to do? Kill all the Twaregs first?]
Edit Corrected by XIII Time
Although the story is set in Africa, Mexican license plates can be seen on the heroes' Jeep. The Mexican flag on the plates has been partially obscured with dirt but it can be seen. [I fail to see how this is a mistake. Had the movie been shot in Mexico (pretending it was NW Africa), that it is definitely a mistake. However, the movie was shot in Morocco (in NW Africa). There are any number of reasons to have old plates on jeeps in the desert - stolen, sold on after market, the owner liked the color, etc. All of which could fit into the context of the movie (just not important enough for explanation).]
Edit Corrected by Zwn Annwn
When the hundreds of solar panels pivot to get the suns energy and it reflects to the hooded character on the roof, this would have blinded him yet he still managed to see perfectly well after. [If you would stare at the solar panels long enough, it could certainly blind you. However, he was shading his eyes and squinting while he was trying to see if Dirk was still there. Given that and the length of time, he might have several afterimages but wouldn't necessarily be blind. Also, there is nothing to point out that he saw perfectly after that. All he did was try to kill the doctor and then fight with Dirk. He could have done that with partial eyesight.]
Edit Corrected by Zwn Annwn
When the captured Al and Dirk are cuffed to the metal platform on the back of the truck, They get free by pushing themselves off the back of the truck. They walk through the sands of the Sahara, without water, cuffed to a heavy, metal platform. Without water and with the high temperatures and the metal platform making it even hotter, it wouldn't take long for them to die. [There is never a description of time nor distance they walked. They might have only been out there for several minutes.]
Edit Corrected by shortdanzr
This error is in the part where Eva, Dirk and Al are trying to jump on the train. You have three camels by the tracks and the characters buried in the sand, ready to jump as the train passes. Sand gets hot very easily and on the Sahara the temperature reaches 50C. If someone would be buried in the hot sands of the Sahara, the person would be dead very fast. [They might have stayed right next to the camels until the train was upon them and then buried themselves. You don't know how long they were buried.]
Edit Corrected by shortdanzr
When Dirk is cajoling the Admiral into letting him use the boat, he mentions that Davis had 5 gold dollars struck just before the Mint was destroyed at the end of the Civil War. He claims that Stonewall Jackson was the recipient of one of the dollars, but Jackson was killed in May of 1863...two years before the end of the war. [It was actually a figure of speech. When he makes reference to the fact the Mint was destroyed, he actually says, "Not before he had 5 gold coins made," (or something similar). He doesn't say "just before." It could have been years before the Mint was destroyed.]
Edit Corrected by XIII
When the characters "stumbled" across the ship they forgot they were looking for, they fired the cannon to take down a helicopter. That cannon has been sitting there under sand for almost 150 years, and yet it works perfectly? [It is perfectly plausible, the ironclad is in the middle of the desert. Given there is no water source nearby (apart from the initial), and that it is buried (protecting it from humidity condensation), it would be enough to protect it from corrosion, and 150 years is not that much for a bulky cannon like that.]
Edit
In the scene were Dirk, Al, and Eva are driving through the desert in the Jeep, Al is sitting in the back with an FN-FAL. In the next shot, he has an AK-47, and in the shot after that, he's got the FN-FAL again. [There is obviously time that passes between the shots, and if you notice when they get out, Dirk throws down an AK-47, so it is possible that they switched weapons or that Al was cleaning it like he did the FN-FAL.]
Edit
At the beginning of the movie as the Confederate ironclad, Texas, begins to leave the dock, it's flying the Stars and Stripes; -seen behind the captain's head as he's giving orders. [In the book, it is explained that they flew that flag to "trick" the Union soldiers in thinking the ironclad ship was a Union ship. It was meant to be a diversion tactic, because the Confederate ironclad ship closely resembled a ship in the Union fleet. In the book, all the confederate soldiers on the ship also wore Union uniforms too. Obviously, in the movie this point was not clearly explained.]
Edit Corrected by XIII