1977 Directed by William Friedkin
Four men from different parts of the globe, all hiding from their pasts in the same remote South American town, agree to risk their lives transporting gallons of unstable nitroglycerin across dangerous jungle.
Gary Alexander Charles L. Campbell Larry Carow Jean-Louis Ducarme Robert Glass Robert Knudson Aaron Levy Colin C. Mouat Roger Sword
As a fan of macho movies, I was completely floored by William Friedkin's Sorcerer. It's a story of desperate men doing desperate things set in a desperate situation.
Who needs a bunch of dialogue when you have savage macho men driving and working on big trucks? The trucks, if driven wrong, will blow up. You're driving a truck in the jungle, it's raining, there's no paved roads, trees are down everywhere and the bridges look like they're about to fall down. The scenes on the bridge would give the healthiest of hearts, a sudden heart attack. It's so tense, I'm certain I forgot to breathe. Add in the perfect mood music by Tangerine Dream, and Sorcerer is one of the…
The usual line of attack against The Wages of Fear is that it takes too long to get going, with a lot of wheel-spinning and artless political supertext taking up too much time before the action starts. I love Wages, but I have to admire Friedkin's dodge here, opening on 20 minutes or so of pure crosshatched nastiness, setting up each of his characters' circumstances not so much to explain why they would agree to take on such a dangerous mission but to establish that the world is so inescapably terrible that you might as well go out with a bang anyway. It's as edgy as any of the explosive set-pieces that come later, so much so that the rare…
It's been 40 years since Sorcerer first came to a South American jungle near you, but it's hard to imagine a time when it didn't exist. Three sequels (with many more to come), three misguided yet often misunderstood prequels, one "Sorcerer Story" (last year's Rogue One, about the embezzlement scheme that leads Sorcerer's Bruno Cremer into exile at the beginning of the movie), countless books, video games, animated cartoons, and one infamous Christmas special later, the pop culture crater left by Sorcerer's impact is so large it makes the tree blown up by the film's heroes look more like a twig.
A cinema of madness. Pure physical detail. Damnation as a form of cinematic spectacle. Man with blood in their hands fulfilling their death wish. What for Clozout is social need, for Friedkin is self-punishment. First world crimes reimagined in a third world purgatory, an amusement park of unforgiven nature. The beauty is that everything is translated in pure action, everything a matter of another form of behavior. Among other things, this is Friedkin’s most compassionate movie, Francisco Rabal taciturn killer is the film’s heart and Bruno Kramer’s masochist banker it is clear-eyed soul.
An adaptation of Georges Arnaud's novel that was also the basis for Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer is William Friedkin's entirely compelling, densely atmospheric and at times nightmarish counterpart to Clouzot's classic. While the basic, surface structure of the plot is mostly the same, the suspense is just as poignant and the cynical view, firmly established from the start, remains present throughout, the experience is different but in the good sense of the word. Sorcerer feels more epic and more mythical (due in no small part to Tangerine Dream's hypnotic score) while still very real. This is achieved through a more distant and hermetic approach akin to documentaries that doesn't allow open spaces for cliches or melodrama to…
The crash course in 1970s global political violence is interesting (and necessary to understand our protagonists), but things really start to get good once Friedkin simplifies the movie to four dudes, a truck, and way too much nitroglycerin.
It’s a little slow to get going but once it does it’s a wild ride. As weird as you could expect any Friedkin movie to be.
Original Title: Sorcerer
Year of Release: 1977
Genres: Thriller; Adventure
Director: William Friedkin
Writers: Walon Green; Georges Arnaud (based on the novel "Wages of Fear")
Main Cast: Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou, Ramon Bieri, Peter Capell, Karl John, Friedrich von Ledebur
#05 of 33 of The Letterboxd Season Challenge 2018-19
Week 5: October 7th-13th
Director Recommendations: Guillermo del Toro Week
A masterful film in pretty much every sense of the word, William Friedkin's Sorcerer is a perfect slice of 1970s cinema. 6 crates filled with explosives, 4 men who have fled from their countries, 2 trucks, and 1 long road. A perfect recipe that makes for one of the most tense adventure films I have seen.
The film…
Where are we going..
I don't know.
HAAAHAHAHAHAHA...
Jesus Christ this movie.
Atmosphere, man, and those visuals. I've never in my life seen the jungle on film like this. I don't even know where to begin with this.
I suppose I'll start with my favourite part of Sorcerer - the absolutely insane direction and shots. The entirety of the bridge scene had me gasping at the screen. The sequence with the burned bodies, the way the mass of the poor, dirty souls reacted, every drop of sweat glistening in the sun of the thick, all-consuming wilderness - all of that is beyond words. This movie manages to unsettle you with minimal dialogue and character interaction, through the sheer power of…
The Letterboxd Season Challenge 2018-19
My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2018-19
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Week 5: October 7th-13th
Director Recommendations: Guillermo del Toro Week
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OH fuck this movie is great. It's so goddamn masculine. Every frame is covered with dirt and sweat. Just imagine a sentient film canister with two massive muscular arms coming out of each side, with a scowl on its face and a stein full of Budweiser, smoking a cigarette and staring at you from across the room.
Now, I haven't seen Wages of Fear and for that I apologize, but I'm willing to take William Friedkin's word for it, and take this movie as its own unique thing. With a soundtrack from Tangerine Dream and a gritty but…
"Sorcerer" (1977) - [8/10] - Day 182 of #Movies365
Two trucks full of boxes filled with unstable dynamite need to be transported to a remote South American village in order to put out a giant oil fire. The terrain they have to traverse is rough and dangerous, not suitable for trucks of any kind, yet alone those carrying dynamite that could explode after hitting one bump too many. Four men who need the money volunteer for the job. But why do they need two trucks full of dynamite? they ask. They don't, they're told. They just don't expect both to make the full journey without exploding.
"Socerer" is based on the same source material as "The Wages of Fear," a…
A goddamn triumph. It builds tension, then it builds tension, and then it builds some more tension. It’s tense, baby! Truly one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, it had my stomach in knots for the full two hours.
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