Sorcerer (1977)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

a Palestinian terrorist, a french Hit-man, an American Mob, and french fraud that will go to Jail in 24 Hours time, all tied together by fate in small Spainish village, William friedkin made one the greatest movies of the 20 century when he made Sorcerer (1977) ironically it was attacked from critrics all over the world, 30 years later cinema became what mr friedkin had imagined it in 1977 when he made Sorcerer Oddly enough, there is still to this day with this technology some movies that didn't learn from Sorcerer and the depth of simplicity in it Although i couldn't help but to think of the great Costa-Gavras's films and the inspiration it had on Sorcerer If you scraped down every greatest shots of all time lists, inevitable you'll find it crowded with shots from Sorcerer, The second hour of the film is full of never- seen-before intensity in modern American cinema, i don't like to think of it as Wages of fear remake Rather i'd like to think of as psychological human study kinda film, it only has the elements of the great wages of fear by Henri Clouzot Just when you think mr friedkin and roy Scheider gave their best performance of their life in the French connection, you stumble upon Sorcerer (1977) an utterly shattering film. 10/10

Being a big fan of Henri-George Cluzot's extraordinary Film Noir The Wages of Fear,a friend gave me the US remake on my birthday. Whilst keen the see the remake,I found myself just going back to the original when I would get a chance to. Taking part in an ICM film exchange project,I was happily caught by surprise,when the title was chosen for viewing,which led to me finally casting a spell.The plot:Caught partaking in various crimes, Nilo, Kassem, Victor, and Jackie each live/hide in a town that has been destroyed by poverty.Wanting to get their hands on any serious cash,they each accept an offer from a company to each take stacks of dynamite to the other side of town in order to close an oil well. Setting off,the drivers soon begin to fear that a fuse has been lit on their lives.View on the film:Backed by Paramount and Universal,the DVD transfer from Universal is shockingly poor,with the print looking like it has been used as a brush,and the original mono soundtrack having a slightly muted quality.Driving deep into the jungle,director William Friedkin & cinematographers Dick Bush and John M. Stephens shred the Film Noir anxiety of the original,to light an Action flick fuse. Building the bridge for real, (with added,hidden safety features!) Friedkin drips the tension of the drivers across the screen with elegant wide shots swaying to the surrounding jungle and picking up every wrong turn that takes place. Turning the wheels with a rapid-fire opening giving each of the drivers an intro,Friedkin blends ultra-stylised overlapping close-ups with Tangerine Dream's great, spidery score to give the jungle a peculiar,other worldly atmosphere. Going down a different road to the original,the screenplay by Walon Green delves into the background of the drivers with a frantic crime edge opening,that reveals the deal that has led to the drivers deciding to put their hands on dynamite. After setting everyone up,Green is disappointingly unable to bridge the action with the personal,as a lack of building any type of bond between Nilo and Jackie Scanlon (played by a very good,tough Roy Scheider and a playful Francisco Rabal) leading the action to look enticing,but lacking a much needed psychological depth to make this sorcerer cast a magical spell.

... by the Sorcerer's Apprentice and he washed out. From time to time I get the feeling that the bulk of the people who post comments here and myself watched two different films but in this case we simply disagree on a fundamental point. All the comments I've read are falling over themselves to award Freidkin brownie points for beginning with the back story i.e. literally showing us how the four losers wound up in the South American hell-hole. I would argue that this weakens the main thrust of the story rather than strengthens it. Henri-Georges Clouzot who made the original and best version in 1953 knew how to construct a suspense-laden screenplay and knew that what mattered was how the men coped with the stressful, perilous journey; the very fact that they had pitched up in this remote cauldron of despair presupposed desperate pasts and I doubt if any one of the millions who watched and thrilled to Clouzot's screenplay devoted even a nano-second's speculation to how the four losers came to be there. Clouzot himself earns brownie points for shooting in black and white; colour detracts far more than it adds to the story. This leaves the cast and whilst Roy Scheider and Bruno Cremer - who played Inspector Jules Maigret in several TV movies - are adequate they are light years short of Yves Montand and Charles Vanel. Like the man said, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Four unfortunate men from different parts of the globe agree to risk their lives transporting gallons of nitroglycerin across dangerous South American jungle.As others have noticed, this film suffers from having a strange title. The original book is "The Wages of Fear", and the film was released under this title in some territories. I suspect that if it had this title today, it might be better remembered. A name like "Sorcerer" clearly suggests a fantasy film, which this is not.That major hurdle aside, it is a good movie and a very ambitious one. With four different prologues, a casual viewer might gt lost or bored or just not know what to think. It pays off as the story progresses, however, and we get a film that is a war movie, a mob movie, an action thriller... it has a little something for everyone.