Various criminals and felons from different parts of the world — Nilo, wanted in Veracruz for assassinations; Kassem, wanted in Jerusalem for bombing; Victor, wanted in Paris for fraud; and Scanlon, wanted in New Jersey for robbing a church and shooting a priest — find refuge in a desolate village somewhere in Latin America. In order to get a large sum of money, they accept a job of driving two trucks full of nitroglycerin 200 miles through the jungle to extinguish a fire at an oil rig. On their journey, they reach numerous obstacles, until only Scanlon brings a box of nitroglycerin to the destination, on foot. He is rewarded, but a bounty hunter awaits him outside a bar.
The problem with remakes is that even those good ones lack the “surprise factor” for the viewers initiated with the original. William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” is one of those good remakes that would otherwise get more recognition had they not been eclipsed by Clouzot’s timeless classic “The Wages of Fear”, which draws inescapable comparisons, but is even today a wonder to look at, since it is at times almost an “impossible” movie extravaganza that was still made, nonetheless. Friedkin’s pace is more dynamic and direct than Clouzot’s, establishing the set-up quickly, and he really films in a jungle while Clouzot filmed in the safety of the French South — whereas he relies more on visuals than on dialogues, yet the four characters are still somewhat underdeveloped and thin. Just like in the original, this film also depicts the two truck drivers embarking on an allegorical road movie, on a long journey through the horrors of life, where the people are just toys in the game of fate, chance and destiny. Not all of the new additions work — for instance, the sequence where a native Indian is running in front of the truck and suddenly sits down is not that scary or suspenseful. However, at least one sequence is equivalent to Clouzot’s original intensity, the famed 10-minute one where the two trucks have to slowly go over a deteriorating bridge during strong rain, which is so shaky it rocks left and right — it is insanity watching it, depicting Friedkin’s audacity and sheer creative will in following his artistic vision, equal to Herzog’s in “Fitzcarraldo”. Wild and raw, using surreal images (a helicopter flying over a jungle hill towards a pillar of smoke coming from an oil rig on fire), this film ilustriously depicts the long struggle between two forces: the force of a cruel, destructive world, and the force of life that refuses to wither in order to live on.
Grade:++
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