It’s funny, I’d always heard Sorcerer was a problematic remake of The Wages of Fear. Now it’s suddenly William Friedkin’s long lost masterpiece. I’ll grant you, the movie deserves to exist on Blu-ray so if that kind of hype is what it takes to justify it, so be it. I think it may be more of a case of “print the legend.” Sorcerer became entangled in some legalities, and now that it’s worked out, we can study the problematic film that it is.
If you know The Wages of Fear, it’s not hard to imagine a remake. Four men have to drive trucks full of nitroglycerine over treacherous terrain. It’s such a pure premise that I’m surprised it hasn’t been remade more often. You could always change the circumstances and have a great thriller. I haven’t seen Wages in years, but it seems Sorcerer doesn’t stray that far from the French classic.
There is a certain elegance to the way Sorcerer introduces its four protagonists, Nilo (Francisco Rabal) is an assassin from Mexico. Kassem (Amidou) was a terrorist whose gang was caught in Israel. Victor (Bruno Cremer) is a French businessman accused of fraud. Jackie (Roy Scheider) is an American gangster who flees a robbery after he crashes the getaway car. It looks like Friedkin invented shakycam in these sequences, and you know what? It looks more decipherable than Paul Greengrass. All four men end up in South America where they can only work as day laborers, because any legitimate paperwork would presumably get them extradited.
It is special to devote this much detail to backstory, but it does take 42 minutes. I recall the epic Wages had a significant setup too, but I don’t recall if it gave each character his own prologue. As a technique of pace, it works well enough, but I’m afraid it ultimately doesn’t much matter why the four men are stuck in South America. When it gets to the meat of the story, they’re all on pretty much equal standing. They use their areas of expertise, be they explosives or driving, but just because we saw those skills on display in lengthy prologues doesn’t mean they’re any more important than a one-line backstory. Jackie was established as a careless driver so he’ll face some redemption, but I’m not convinced that needs 42 minutes to set up. We also know which characters are duplicitous, but that also doesn’t seem to necessitate 42 minutes of setup. Yes, my Blu-ray player has a counter on it. I might not have noticed in a theater.
42 minutes in, an oil fire explodes in glorious high definition on this Blu-ray transfer. The oil company wants to fight the fire with more explosives, but the supply they find is a year old and leaking nitroglycerine. They do a good job explaining how fragile it is, but why are they using this instead of the good stuff? I guess because they’re cheap. Also because it’s more awesome this way. If they used stable explosives, we wouldn’t have the awesome truck set pieces to come.
Sorcerer also does a good job establishing why they can’t fly the explosives to the site, and why not just any truck driver can do this job. They essentially hold tryouts where we see some drivers are just too reckless to keep the cargo steady. Our four men above are desperate enough to take the job.
The stuff in between the suspense set pieces maybe is not as strong as the set pieces themselves, but once it gets going there’s not much down time. The wealth of close calls at the last second provides effective payoffs to the hour of buildup. The fact that it was all done practical is monumental. You don’t get that kind of real spectacle these days, even in my beloved Fast & Furious films.
As I mentioned twice in my analysis of the film, the Blu-ray itself looks beautiful. 90% of it is as clear and sharp as if it were filmed this year. You will see grain in places, but it would be akin to the grain of a film that was shot on 35mm this year being transferred to Blu-ray. Where it gets fuzzy is mainly in the rain, and torrential downpours are likely to grain up. The sweat of the grizzled drivers and the texture of their crusty machines is palpable, and the lush foliage of the jungle is a beautiful green. There are no bonus features, but the Blu-ray book packaging is beautiful and includes some lovely illustrated liner notes.
I enjoyed Sorcerer quite a bit and my issues with it may be nitpicks. It may more likely be a case of succumbing to its own hype. The conventional wisdom is that Sorcerer suffered for being released the same year as Star Wars. While there is no denying the magnitude of that blockbuster, there are plenty of examples of several films being blockbuster successes at the same time. Even against Avatar, Sherlock Holmes made several hundred million dollars. It’s possible Sorcerer was just an ambitious movie that wasn’t perfect and wasn’t for everybody Still, Franchise Fred says we should keep making Wages of Fear movies. Start with Wages of Fear: The Outback, Wages of Fear: The Bayou and then of course Wages of Fear: Tokyo Drift.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
