El salario del miedo

Friedkin claims this was the toughest film to make of his career, and it isn't hard to see why. The balance of this film takes place in some woe begotten Latin American country. You can just feel the poverty and desperation in the air as the only work is for an oil drilling firm who doesn't exactly seem bent on worker safety. The elements are intentionally brutal and they only add to the tension. And thats even before this story really gets going.

Early on, we are introduced to four characters who are all guilty of doing something terrible in one corner of the world or another. Roughly a half hour into the film, all four find themselves in a tiny impoverished Latin American village trying to eek out a living and forget the troubles they left behind. Not only is the local economy weak, but the place is socially on the verge of revolution. It's amazing the kind of jobs men will volunteer for to get out of these circumstances. Anyway, these four men are given the chance of transporting some highly explosive dynamite through rugged terrain in crappy old trucks so it can be used to put out a massive oil fire some 200 miles away. It is noted by one of the men that more than enough explosives are being transported. Obviously, at least one of the trucks is not expected to make it! Not only do you have an explosive cargo with unreliable trucks, but also there are armed rebels along the way who probably won't just let you pass right on through. Still, the reward for completing this job is just too much to pass on.

The film is very, very good. In fact the skill that it took to make the film is responsible for most of the stars I'm giving it. The story itself is often just not believable. The journey these four men take is ludicrously perilous. They drive their vehicles over rickety bridges that nobody in real life would have tried to get over in those trucks. Like in other Friedken films, no character is completely likable, but that only makes it tougher to figure out who will live and who will die. There are a few nice twists here and there, right up to the very end to keep you guessing. The acting is exceptional. Scheider was Friedkin's fourth or fifth choice for the main character. Steve McQueen originally wanted it badly, but he demanded a part included for then wife Ali McGraw. Friedkin balked at this and then later regretted the decision. He later stated that he never thought Scheider was a good enough leading man. This is an error, however. Scheider is a terrific actor and his performance here is outstanding.

The film bombed badly at the box office. Heck, if you weren't in line to see Star Wars that year, you were in line to see Smokey and the Bandit! This is definitely one of Friedkin's best, and it has somehow almost been completely forgotten. The film apparently got a PG rating but it is filled with violence and all manner of evil goings on. You'll have to suspend your disbelief for some of the scenes, but you'll be glad you did. I'll give it 8 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

Added Feb 14, 2008: RIP Roy Scheider!

A remake of Henri-George Cluzot's 1953 film The Wages of Fear (also on DVD in a lovely Criterion Disc), this William Friedkin film stars Roy Scheider (at his weary, doomed finest) as one of four men exiled to an unnamed South American country by their mistakes and crimes. Trapped in squalor (and it's damn convincing looking squalor, too, far beyond the sunbaked black-and-white compositions of Wages of Fear; this film looks like it's leaving mud on your shoes), unable to return to the lives they abandoned, they're driven by circumstance to accept a normally unthinkable job. They have to drive old, unstable dynamite from its storage site hundreds of miles over mountain terrain and washed-out roads to the location of an oil well fire so the blaze can be snuffed out. The pay is exorbitant -- but it's commiserate to the danger. The risks are colossal ... and they ultimately have no choice.

Sorcerer is tense, suspenseful film-making at its finest; you become physically uncomfortably during this film thanks to the incredible sense that at any minute our heroes would literally be blown to hell. (I mean, we all walk around with the philosophical knowledge we could die at any moment, but talk about your concrete metaphors ... ) Friedkin creates a palpable sense of place, and Scheider is immensely powerful as a man whose every move suggests that he knows he's doomed. Taut with suspense, completely convincing and breathtakingly human, Sorcerer is an unfairly maligned film that delivers in every way.

And the Score is unique and nightmarish. A new DVD would be welcome to many happy fans.

Sorcerer's keynote is epitomized early on when introducing Bruno Cremer's wealthy character, living an ivory tower existence, with no reason yet to feel insecure about much. His wife reads to him a war article. He comments, "Just another soldier." She replies, "No one is just anything." Indeed, in William Friedkin's merciless adventures, heroic characters tend to be defined by any and everything contemptible, villains are unknowable, the lines between them are exceedingly vague…and arbitrary. The French Connection, man-versus-man. The Exorcist, man-versus-unexplained. With Sorcerer, man-versus-chance, an indefinable, undetected competitor. The realm of Friedkin's visualization is a perilous, brutal, ethically insolvent one where there bluntly is no God, just randomness, meaninglessness, pure survival.

Unlike Clouzot's incredible original film, Friedkin doesn't allow for easy identification with any of the central figures, and despite Roy Scheider's impressively physical central performance, it remains emotionally aloof. But that doesn't matter. Seeing each man's prior exploits tells so much, voyeuristically, about their behavior when they happen upon each other in the thirsty alien setting where they're all out of their elements. We also see how regular joes can be monsters.

Also, throughout their respective prefaces, Friedkin foretells the boiling dangers awaiting our scandalous foursome, with sardonic counterpoint. Francisco Rabal abandons the hotel in a wrought-iron elevator decorated green, as are the hotel walls. As Amidou and his co-conspirators plan their getaway, they hurriedly study a map. When he chooses "the long way," the suggestion's far more poignant than he realizes. It's also in the early New Jersey fast-sketch that Friedkin's murky jesting emerges: In a church cellar, various priests calculate thousands of dollars, wearing visors, more like bookies than Christ's followes. Armed robbers break in. At the wedding upstairs, the ceremony's priest declares, "Christ abundantly blesses this love." Back to the basement as dollars gush from canvas bags, robbers jam their pouches. Upstairs, "You've strengthened your consent before the Church." Friedkin pushes into bride and groom. The bride has a black eye.

In a Paris café comprising close-ups of enticing culinary delights, Cremer, his wife and their friend babble about substandard lobster in humid South American waters, while Cremer merely half-listens. The truck Scheider runs into has a Meridian Freight insignia. Friedkin's pessimistic joking could be doubled here: Scheider zigzags off a "meridian" in a manufacturing district, a massive water tower dwarfing everything else. He'll eventually find himself in a manufacturing gutter of the world. During his getaway, he passes big color signs promoting things he won't see, have or enjoy again.

A handful of exiles and fugitives from starkly different backgrounds, cultures, nationalities are driven by desperation to go into hiding, working in an obscure oil drilling operation in South America. When fire breaks out of control, they each seize a chance to earn enough money to escape their hellholes, earn citizenship, feel as if they might restore honor, by transporting crates of unstable dynamite through miles of perilous jungle in rusty, rickety old trucks. But this dynamite, negligently stored, literally oozes nitro. Any shock, any vibration, they detonate. Somehow, driving in pairs, these men must carry their cargo past a crumbling rope-suspension bridge, swinging ferociously in a savage storm over a flood-heaving river, a colossal tree blocking the road, and a flock of forlorn, vicious bandits.

The cash sum being rewarded to the drivers is erratic all through the film. The oil company first says they will pay 8,000 pesos to each driver. Later the demand doubles. Later one boasts that he and another one will get double shares of 20,000 each. By the end, a check reads 40,000 pesos which would be just 10,000 each. This seems like one of Friedkin's sadistic impositions of his thematic intentions. We're drawn into circumstances so desperate, so reckless, any amount sounds beautiful, any amount will do, then eventually, returning to any semblance of relatable civilization is all that matters.

Friedkin and screenwriter Walon Green strip the source story's existential themes to the core. Driven by a series of striking images, it ultimately goes one step further than Clouzot by suggesting that humankind is subject not only to the vagaries of fate and nature but to its own vengeful, venal essence. What's so enrapturing about Sorcerer is that the needs and situations that occur, one after another, are so primal, these characters are hairpin turns between murderously divided and collaborating with implicit trust. Friedkin exemplifies the seduction of voyeurism in the very close, detailed but utterly omniscient way we follow each unrelated character to this godforsaken place, where they know absolutely nothing of each other, but we've seen them all in their respective realms of normalcy, the shameful predicaments that got them here. But just as well, we're ever so subtly implicated in the vengeful, venal, not in what we see but what we find ourselves expecting. Take for example the riot that erupts in the street after the oil explosion. The townspeople are violent, frenzied, relentless, but Friedkin leaves out the authorities' retaliation. And we expect it…indeed, we begin to want it, relate to it. It's a disturbing feeling.

Friedkin loves to show mechanisms, the down and dirty way things work, as in the montage with minor-key synth music showing the rag-tag bunch preparing trucks. It makes us that much more conscious of the threadbare fragility of the utterly extraordinary ensuing action sequences, most notably the hazardous rainstorm crossing of the fragile rope-bridge. No matter how much these men exert themselves to cover every corner, suspect everyone, spot every detail, do whatever they can to ensure their survival, they never have any control over their own fates, not how they got into this mess or how or if they get out of it. They don't all speak the same language, none of them trust or even understand one another, or even use their real names. Even if they do succeed, or some, or none, they have about as much control over their deaths as they do their births.

Four unfortunate men from different parts of the globe agree to risk their lives transporting gallons of nitroglycerin across dangerous South American jungle.

As others have noticed, this film suffers from having a strange title. The original book is "The Wages of Fear", and the film was released under this title in some territories. I suspect that if it had this title today, it might be better remembered. A name like "Sorcerer" clearly suggests a fantasy film, which this is not.

That major hurdle aside, it is a good movie and a very ambitious one. With four different prologues, a casual viewer might gt lost or bored or just not know what to think. It pays off as the story progresses, however, and we get a film that is a war movie, a mob movie, an action thriller... it has a little something for everyone.

An unfortunate circumstance slipped Sorcerer into the ether. And that circumstance was Star Wars. They were released at the same time and any film up against the Wars of the Stars was dwarfed in comparison. It's terribly unfair as Lucas' success consequently became Friedkin's downfall. Sorcerer is a very good film, a great one in fact. Based upon the same book as the classic French film The Wages of Fear, it's material worth repeating in the perpetually sweaty grit of the 70s. The problem with Wages is that it spent an unnecessary hour and a half on setup. Sorcerer is a bit better, spending an hour instead, but it's much leaner and doesn't waste time. Opening with quick engaging vignettes, I can see how a viewer who wasn't aware of their appearance would feel alienated. They're not exactly necessary but it opens up the world of Sorcerer in a way that it wouldn't do otherwise. It's thanks to its dynamic editing, super quick and super sharp all the time while holding onto the tension.

As a result, the film is like the most thrilling parts of The French Connection put into one volatile barrel. It's a shame that Friedkin doesn't like working with Roy Scheider in hindsight, considering he got him an Oscar nomination for Connection, but I'm a big fan of him. He's a great leading man in All That Jazz, for example. Here, the cast do struggle to stand out and make their mark, but that's because the material doesn't lend itself to personalities and inner struggle. They're best used metaphorically, which Sorcerer doesn't do overtly. Instead, the joy is watching the men's resourcefulness, especially in a sequence where a big trunk is in the way, or the nail-biting bridge scene. What stands out is the remarkable sound design that makes every crunch feel life-threatening. It's a shame the score by Tangerine Dream is so dated, even if it was celebrated at the time. Works at times, doesn't at others. Sorcerer is a rough around the edges movie, but a thrilling ride nevertheless.

8/10