Met with mixed notices upon its release, Sorcerer has received a smattering of stellar revies over the last decade or so, and it is much deserved.
A remake of the 1953 French classic Wages of Fear, this 1977 release starred Roy Scheider as a criminal on the run that lands him in a squalid village in Latin America. There he volunteers alongside other outlaw nomads to transport an unstable batch of explosives throughout the dense South American jungle, where any significant bump will see the whole shipment go “boom!”
White knuckle thriller filmmaking done with much character depth and a palpable sense of place, Sorcerer saw Friedkin at the top of his game, following The French Connection and The Exorcist with a film of equal power and filmmaking prowess.
Roy Scheider delivers his best performance as a hunted man pushed to the edge in his tortuous path to redemption. An infamous shoot in the jungles of Mexico brought about a series of conflicts in which Friedkin lived up to his reputation as a no-shits-given taskmaster, an approach that once again delivered an incredible film that many, dare say, betters the original.
