Synopsis: Remake of Wages of Fear (see blog 017) 4 down-and-outs drive 2 trucks loaded with nitroglycerin across the jungle, swamps and rivers of S America.
Director: William Friedkin
Actors: Roy Schneider, Bruno Cremer
How viewed: Bought (region 1) DVD
.. Friedkin put every dime onto the screen. It fairly glistens, lit with piercing, glowing blues under an action-movie sheen of diamond hard white light.
I say:
The original film 'The Wages of Fear' (hereinafter known as TWoF), has numerous faults, but disappointingly, this remake fails to improve almost any aspect! The first half of TWoF depicts the squalid life the 4 men now lead, and drags on too long, but in Sorcerer there is even an added section at the start (covering the back-stories, which is completely unnecessary), and the middle section (in the back-of-beyond village) doesn't really convince. Once the drive begins (which is where both films could really have started) TWoF developed the main characters and their relationships (Sorcerer doesn't), the problems they come across (especially the wooden section of road) are nerve-wrecking (Sorcerer just doesn't rack up the tension) and the ending is great (Sorcerer's is strange!). Sorcerer benefits from the score by Tangerine Dream (though sometimes it distracts), and the rope bridge section is (nearly) brilliant, but I didn't warm to the characters (particularly Roy Schneider), the editing is weird (you don't see what happens to the 2nd truck at the end of the rope bridge), there's a strange moon-scape psychedelic sequence towards the end, and the title is stupid (it's the name of one of the trucks, glimpsed for a millisecond at one point)! The only good thing about Sorcerer is that it made me go back and watch TWoF again!
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