Sorcerer

For me, William Friedkin's SORCERER (1977) completes his 1970s triumverate of Great Filmmaking, even if the film may have its share of flaws.  It's a daring Hollywood production, so expensive that it required the financing of two studios.  This was a time when many filmmakers, some great, some not-so, took Machievellan risks, daring to create mighty stories on huge canvases.  Sometimes, the films bombed and nearly destroyed their studios.  HEAVEN'S GATE is another.  APOCALYPSE NOW would eventually be profitable, with another mad genius behind the lens in an exotic locale. Friedkin, like Cimino, Coppola, and others, believed their own press.  Unchecked ego.  Restaint? Ha! The results were pretentious and sometimes majestic.  I happen to rank all three of the aforementioned movies highly.  Worth the risk and money, perhaps.  I try not to think of the personal tolls upon casts and crews.

SORCERER details four men of dubious character. Nilo (Francisco Rabal) is a hitman in Mexico.  Kassem, a.k.a Martinez (Amidou) is a Palestinian terrorist.  Victor (Bruno Cremer) is a Paris businessman accused of fraud. Scanlon (Roy Scheider) is a getaway driver for a gang of Irish thieves in New Jersey.   Each character is shown in his own vignette, establishing (to varying degrees) his considerable shortcomings and doomed lot.  Many viewers might sympathize most with Victor, who gets the strongest character development, seen even having a loving conversation with his wife.

Is Victor the saddest character? Do we care about him? Should we?  When he finds himself in a disgusting,  Latin American hellhole (housing an American oil refinery), a place to which each of the aforementioned characters has retreated to escape various retributions, the makings of an epic are in place. Are they epic, men?  The quartet, all broke and desperate for a way out, land the assignment of manning trucks loaded with nitroglycerin that requires travel over two hundred bumpy, possibly uncultivated miles to a well that has exploded and is blazing out of control.  Walon Green's screenplay exploits every opportunity such a premise might entail.  This is an action film, yes, but also another scarring journey into hearts of darkness.  Of dark men who perhaps meet their karma, or whatever your persuasion. 

Friedkin inhabits the steamy, dirty South American country (but actually filmed in the Dominican Republic) with convincing art direction and some pretty astonishing set pieces, including passage over a very unstable bridge during a rainstorm (seen on the movie's poster).  The director follows a story similar to 1953's THE WAGES OF FEAR, but insists his film is not a straight remake.   Friedkin has always been good with atmosphere, local color, and period flavor.  SORCERER (its title refers to one of the trucks) makes you feel sweaty and spent, physically, emotionally, and maybe even spiritually drained.  This is a very treacherous ride for mind and soul.  The final scenes in particular are impossible to erase from memory.  Tangerine Dream's eerie electronic score, one of the most disturbing in film history, completes the nightmare in ways that are still hard to put into words.