Sometimes you hear about a movie, you about it and become interested in watching it, only to leave if for some future ocasion. Maybe you are not in the mood at that time or maybe no copy is available. So you keeping put it off until, when you finally sit down to watch it, all that remains is to regret not having done so sooner.
That is exactly the case with Sorcerer, the mostly forgotten and unknown 1977 movie directed by William Friedkin, responsible for The French Connection, which won the Acadeny Awards for Best Picture and Best Director of 1971, and The Exorcist, which won big at the box office in 1974.
Sorcerer is about four men who, for their own reasons, shown in four prologues, are hiding in the jungle under false identities, working for a petroleum company. Heat all around, police corruption rampant, bad food, little money… a meaningless life by all appearances. That is, until an oil well explodes and the company needs someone to take two old trucks loaded with very unstable dynamite to that spot through dense jungle, in a job for which they intend to pay a lot. Our four anti-heroes accept the mission and what follows are some of the most intense sequences in cinema history, with the drivers (Roy Scheider in the lead) facing dangerous roads, criminals, distrust among themselves and collapsing bridges.
Based on the 1950 French novel The Wages of Fear, by George Arnaud, and previously adapted in 1953, the Friedkin version is a hard and tense spectacle, bleak for much of its running time, not only about men against the world but also about how sometimes it is impossible to escape fate. The total antithesis of Star Wars, which had been released a month earlier and became the phenomenon we all know about. The light and optimistic adventure directed by George Lucas obliterated the much darker picture at the box office. With a budget of US$ 22 million (split between Paramount and Universal), Sorcerer grossed only around 9 million.
A flop, for sure, but one of the most impressive in memory, with a behind-the-scenes story so complex and crazy that could itself be the subject of another movie. It seriously damaged the director career (Hollywood doesn’t forgive failures of such ambition), but Friedkin must have died proud of the dynamite movie he crossed the jungle to give us.
Sorcerer (1977, Paramount-Universal)
Starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou
Directed by William Friedkin
121 minutes
Rating: 10 Nerds (of 10) 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
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