Plot
The film begins with a prologue set in Richmond, Virginia in 1865, showing the ironclad CSS Texas, carrying the last of the Confederacy's treasury, as Captain Adrian Tombs tries to run a Union blockade.
The film then moves to the present day, where World Health Organization doctors Eva Rojas and Frank Hopper are investigating a disease that is spreading across Mali, Africa. Assassins attempt to murder Eva, but she is rescued by Dirk Pitt, from National Underwater and Marine Agency, who was diving nearby.
Dirk gets a call from a dealer in Nigeria. He sells Dirk a gold Confederate States of America coin, one of supposedly only five in existence, which was found in the Niger River. Dirk believes that this is a clue to the long-lost Texas. He convinces his boss, James Sandecker, to let him, Al Giordino, and Rudi Gunn, from NUMA, take Sandecker's speedboat up the Niger River to search for the Texas. They give Eva and Hopper a ride, so that they can continue their investigation, for the WHO.
Businessman Yves Massarde and dictator General Kazim, who controls half of civil-war torn Mali, try to stop the doctors from discovering the source of "plague". Kazim sends men to kill them and the NUMA team, not realizing their CIA and Navy background. Dirk, Al and Rudi survive the attack. Rudi tries to get out of the country to get help while Dirk and Al go to rescue the doctors. They save Eva, and then the three try to get across the border, but are captured by Tuareg, who are fighting the civil war against Kazim. The Tuaregs’ leader, Madibo, shows Eva his people, who are dying from the same disease she was investigating at the beginning. After taking samples, Eva finds that their water is contaminated.
By accident, Al stumbles into a cave with a painting showing the ironclad Texas. Dirk believes that the Texas became stranded when the river water dried up after a storm and that the same river that carried the Texas now runs underground, spreading the contamination. They start to follow the dry river bed and work their way to the border. Dirk still hopes to find the ironclad along the way. Their plans are interrupted when they stumble upon the solar detoxification plant owned by Massarde, and realize that it is the source of the contamination. Rudi and Sandecker analyze their samples and find that the contamination is heading down the Niger River to the ocean, but they can't get any government help to intervene during a civil war in a sovereign country.
Massarde captures Dirk and the others. He keeps Eva but sends Dirk and Al to Kazim. They escape but end up stranded in the middle of the desert. They find the wreck of a plane and fashion it into a land yacht which they use to find civilisation and contact Sandecker, who warns them that Kazim and his troops are after them. Dirk and Al enlist Madibo's aid to return to the plant and rescue Eva. He helps them infiltrate the plant and rescue his people who are working there as slaves. Rather than risk discovery, Massarde plans to destroy the plant, making it almost impossible to stop the contamination. Al goes to defuse the bombs while Dirk tries to head off Massarde. After a battle with a corrupt Tuareg, Dirk manages to save Eva while Massarde escapes. Dirk, Eva, and Al get away from the plant in a 1936 Avions Voisin C-28, but are strafed by Kazim in a helicopter gunship. A series of explosions along the dry river bed reveals the wreckage of the Texas, right where the cave painting showed it to be. They take cover inside thinking the ironclad's armor will protect them but Kazim's armor-piercing ammunition penetrates the rusted ironclad's armor with ease. They manage to fight back with an old cannon and destroy Kazim's gunship, just as Madibo arrives with Tuareg reinforcements which forces Kazim's army to surrender and end the civil war.
In the end the contamination is dealt with, and Sandecker is offered a deal to do some covert work, while the government serendipitously funds NUMA, which he accepts, tentatively. It seems that Massarde, busy eating with a businessman, does not notice that the waiter (Sandecker's undercover "friend" Carl) who pours him water from a bottle (which he drinks) served ONLY HIM and then disappeared with the rest of the bottle. It is implied that Massarde is poisoned (perhaps with his own toxins) on orders from the US Government. The Texas gold, which belongs to the CSA – Confederate States of America, is left with Madibo's people. We see a soccer ball come bouncing into the same cave with the painting of the ironclad Texas, with Al in pursuit. He is playing soccer with the local kids. The cave, once empty, is now full of the gold. Later, while Al, Rudi, Sandecker are busy, Dirk and Eva are at the beach at her house on the bay in Monterey.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)