Somewhere in the jungles of South America, in a squalid tropical
slum for migrants who risk their lives working on a dangerous nearby oil rig
owned by an American corporation, is where criminal fugitives of the world
gather to escape the law.
Highly underrated, Sorcerer
(1977) is evocative of such action adventure classics as Apocalypse Now (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). It’s a gripping,
relentless and fatalistic film about hard men struggling for survival against machine,
nature and each other.
Visually, it’s steeped in grungy sweat dripping, mud
encrusted imagery that immerses the viewer in a rough predatory world of desperate outlaws in hiding. Filmed in actual Jungle locations, the raw gritty visual
details look completely authentic.
The local watering hole canteen is where some unlikely and
unsavory characters cross paths; a hit man from Vera Cuz, a terrorist from
Jerusalem, a corrupt business tycoon from Paris, and a mobster from New Jersey.
They all have their secret reasons for being there, which are outlined in the
first half of the film. They are men from all walks of life who end up in one
of the poorest and remote regions on earth.
Now beautifully restored, this harrowing suspenseful
adventure set in real locations around the world is a remake of Henri-Georges
Clouzot’s classic French film The Wages
of Fear (1953), which was a big hit in Europe in its own time and was based
on the novel ‘Le Salaire de la Peur’ by
Georges Arnaud.
This remake by William Friedkin, who also directed The Exorcist (1973), The French Connection (1971) and Killer Joe (2011) is every bit as
engaging and has lost none of its nail biting suspense, even improving on the
original in many ways.
The excitement really starts rolling when the call goes out from
the oil company for skilled drivers to transport a deadly load of nitroglycerin
in modified scrap trucks through 200 miles of treacherous jungle terrain. If
they can make it to a blazing oil well fire without blowing themselves up in
the process, they will be well rewarded.
There’s an eerie synthesized soundtrack by Tangerine Dream
throughout the action sequences that gives the movie that same cold fatalistic
edgy feeling that Blade Runner (1982)
had. For me it brought to mind the aesthetic soundscape of movies like Taxi Driver (1976), typical of the era
it was made in.
The odds are heavily against the drivers as the volatile
payload is contained in 6 deteriorating boxes that are so unstable that the
slightest impact could blow a crater the size of a small town. The cobbled
together trucks take on a personality of their own as they slog through the
dense tropical forest like predatory metal beasts.
One of the last great films to come out of the new independent
Hollywood that emerged after the old studio system collapsed, Sorcerer was the victim of bad timing
when it first arrived in theaters and was sadly overlooked during the
unexpected Sci-fi juggernaut that was the Star Wars (1977) phenomenon, which had opened in theatres just a month before
and was still playing to packed houses for years afterward.
This newly digitally re-mastered classic, which will be
available on Blu-ray and DVD April 22, 2014, may finally give this unnoticed
film the attention it deserves. Don’t miss it.
JP
