Sorcerer (1977) A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp (C) 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: A haunting remake of the French classic THE WAGES OF FEAR, which takes on a vicious life of its own.
In principle I'm against remakes. Rare is the remake that is not a pallid carbon copy of its predecessor, as was the case with the wretched DIABOLIQUE (which, ironically enough, was created by the same man who also created WAGES, Henri-Georges Clouzot). SORCERER is by William Friedkin and manages to escape that trap through a show of surreal visual power. The movie lingers in the mind long after others have evaporated, if for no other reason than because it presents us with some really astonishing things to look at.
Unlike the previous movie, which confined itself more or less to one locale, SORCERER spends its first forty-five minutes globe-hopping and setting up its four main characters. Nilo (Francisco Rabal) is a cold and dispassionate killer of international repute. Kassem (Anidou) is a Palestinian terrorist. Victor Manzon (Bruno Cremer), a French financial whiz, has a wife he loves dearly, but he is forced to abandon her when a business deal goes south and a partner kills himself. Finally, Scanlon (Roy Scheider) is a smalltime Jersey hood who has to flee the country when he offends a mob boss by knocking over the poor box in his church.
Three of them flee to an unidentified Central American country -- with all the globehopping, it's the only locale that's not announced with a title card -- and hide out as menial laborers for an oil company. The country is overseen by a military junta; life is meager and hateful. There's no way out -- until a well accident forces the company to scrounge for suicide drivers. They need someone who can drive four cases of *sweating* dynamite (which could explode for no reason at all) across 218 miles of jungle. The fourth, the assassin, shows up later (he's been sent after Scanlon) and is roped into the mission after a disaster forces them to get another man.
The movie quickly sets itself up as a case study in desperation. All of them want out: the money promised by the company for the job will set them free, but there's a good chance they'll blow themselves up in the attempt. They have to build two trucks to haul the stuff more or less from scratch. The odds they face are sickening: outdated maps, bad weather, and a rope bridge they have to drive BOTH trucks across. (This last scene is most astonishing for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it appears to have been totally unfaked.) At one point they are stopped cold by a fallen tree; at another, they are held at gunpoint by soldiers. There's no easy way out of anything -- not even death, which comes all too easy for the wrong reasons. All of this is set to a mesmerizing and eerie Tangerine Dream score that is well worth seeking out.
SORCERER is agonizing and draining, and in the end, highly existential. It's not a movie you feel like celebrating life with, but it stays with you long after it vanishes from your eyes. Comparing it with its original isn't really the best thing to do -- better to see it as a brother. A very twisted and ugly brother, but a brother nonetheless.
Three and a half out of four crates of nitro.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth =smilin' in your face, all the time wanna take your place, the BACKSTABBERS=
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