The Sorcerer by William Friedkin

[Batutta]

See this movie. Just see it. It's Friedkin's remake of Wages of Fear, about truck drivers transporting nitroglycerin across the jungle. An amazing piece of suspense filmmaking. There is a scene with a truck traversing a rope bridge that is one of the most insane looking things I've ever seen attempted on film. The blu-ray has an incredible new transfer, pristine, but still retaining that gritty, shot in the 70's authenticity.

EDIT: The film is just called SORCERER, no 'the'

 

[Gillvane]

I haven't seen this one, but I'm sure that if I watched it I'd be entertained. This is what it missing in a lot of movies, some suspense and some characters you actually care about, along with some good acting and this one has a pretty good cast. This often gets replaced with special FX and cgi, explosions, car chases, parkour, etc. . I'm not saying they didn't make crappy movies in the 70's, of course they did, and they still make great movies today, but this is the crux of the biscuit.

 

[Batutta]

I haven't seen this one, but I'm sure that if I watched it I'd be entertained. This is what it missing in a lot of movies, some suspense and some characters you actually care about, along with some good acting and this one has a pretty good cast.

Great acting from top to bottom. I wouldn't say you care about the characters in the traditional sense, as they are all pretty seedy people of very dubious morality, but they are fascinating characters to watch bounce off each other. It's a deeply cynical movie.

 

[GaryinCalifornia]

I saw this in a screening up in LA as a kid... I don't think it did that well at the box office... everyone including myself because of the Exorcist

 

[Batutta]

I saw this in a screening up in LA as a kid... I don't think it did that well at the box office... everyone including myself because of the Exorcist

It's failure at the box office is still a subject of discussion...Main culprits are a misleading title (people thought it was a sequel to The Exorcist), bad timing (it came out the same month as Star Wars), lack of big movie stars, and it's general cynical tone not fitting with the times which were trending towards more uplifting movies like Star Wars. It also had a large budget for the time, 22 million, so it's 14 million dollar worldwide gross was a big loss for the studio.

 

[Mitch Gross]

It was considered a huge belly flop at the time. To put the cost in perspective, Star wars cost $10 million at the same time.

I love the film, about as much as Wages of Fear. It is a great work of 70s nihilism. All the characters are scum and their lives are being wasted away in squalor. The first 40 minutes actually takes place in four different parts of the world as the main characters screw up their lives and then have to live in hiding in the poorest parts of South America. Then the story actually begins.

What I love most about the film is that there really is very little dialog in it. The vast majority of it is "pure cinema" and the execution is fantastic. The story is really barely a thread of an excuse, and there is little structure to the plot, merely an outline. It is very much an experiential film, and it drag you down into the journey these guys take from one nightmare situation to another. That generally equates to one fairly brilliant set piece to another in some intense movie making. Very atmospheric, very intense, always engrossing.

Plus it has the most amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack one could imagine. I could just listen to this movie.

I saw the film in the theater when I was probably way too young to be seeing such things. I caught it in special screenings a few times over the years, and I'm very happy Friedkin won his lawsuit and got this film back out into circulation. William Friedkin is supposed to be an absolute nightmare to work for, but damn if he couldn't spin a great yarn.