Classic Movie Review: 'Sorcerer'

Sorcerer (1977)

Directed by William Friedkin

Written by Walon Green

Starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou

Release Date June 24th, 1977

Published August 16th, 2023

In our final tribute to famed director William Friedkin, myself and my co-hosts on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast watched and talked about Friedkin's much maligned and recently reconsidered 1977 thriller Sorcerer. When it was released, Sorcerer was written off by many critics and it was considered a failure for not reaching the box office heights of Friedkin's twin classics The Exorcist and The French Connection, a standard that was deeply unfair to this far more challenging movie.

Sorcerer was a remake of The Wages of Fear, a challenging, cynical, and deeply uncommercial French movie that was based on an equally bleak and unrelenting book. Sorcerer thus was never designed as a typical blockbuster with the kind of wide appeal that creates box office success. It's a tribute to Friedkin's dedication as an artist and his hubris as a businessman that he would try use his clout to make a deeply uncommercial movie into a success. It didn't work, but he did make one hell of a great movie.

But, don't ask my why it was called Sorcerer, that title is complete nonsense. The story of Sorcerer introduces us to four desperate men fleeing from what is likely an early death. Each has a criminal background that was a recipe for dying before their time. Wanting to prolong their miserable lives, each man escapes to South America where work is scarce and survival is a struggle. There are few jobs and the one potentially well paying gig is so ludicrously dangerous it may not be worth doing.

Oil companies are destroying the natural beauty of the South American jungles. When one of their oil rigs catches fire the only way to stop it is to blow it up. For that, they need nitroglycerin, a volatile explosive, one that is deeply unstable. The slightest jostling could set off the explosive and destroy anyone in the vicinity of it. Nevertheless, the oil company is offering good money to transport nitroglycerin via truck over the uneven ground of the jungle to their oil well fire. They need four men for the job and, of course, the four desperate men we've met before are the men for the job.

With nothing to lose, these four lost souls must rebuild trucks that are capable of running smoothly enough not to set off the nitroglycerin while sturdy enough to make it over the mountainous jungle terrain where paved roads are a non-existent luxury and dirt paths are often covered over by landslides due to the rainy season. It's a fool's errand that only men at the very end of their tether would attempt to take on. That's the backdrop of Sorcerer that sets us on a path of intense, grim, nasty scenes that you watch through your fingers as you gasp for every tension filled breath.

Sorcerer is like Ice Road Truckers on steroids. If you've never seen that History Channel reality series, it follows truckers who carry supplies across the most perilous terrain in the world as they risk dropping their giant semi-trucks through ever more perilous and icy terrain. Sorcerer may not be on ice but the landscape of loose dirt and gravel feels just as perilous. Add to that the nitroglycerin in the back of the two trucks on this journey and you get the sense of the pressure cooker of suspense that is Sorcerer. Where the thought that a TV show can't necessarily film and share the death of its protagonists, removing a little of the suspense of Ice Road Truckers, a movie is not bound by this and it feels as if we could lose any one of our main characters in Sorcerer at any moment.

One of the reasons that Sorcerer was a bad bet to be a big hit was Friedkin's decision to cast actors not familiar to American audiences. Aside from Roy Scheider, fresh off the success of The French Connection and Jaws, the cast is almost entirely unknown to American audiences. This was a calculated choice by Friedkin. Because we don't know these actors, we can't assume which one might survive and which one might die. A movie star provides a comfort that they will be around for a while in a movie they are the star of. Hiring unknown actors however, creates doubt that has a big role to play in the breathtaking suspense of Sorcerer.

Friedkin takes the bones of Wages of Fear and expands on it with his own brand of intense, pressure cooker suspense. Friedkin's set pieces are exceptionally well chosen and filmed with terrifying urgency. Whether its a raggedy wooden bridge, a pothole laden trail, or a downed tree blocking the only road to the oil well, Friedkin makes brilliant use of the surroundings to build his center piece action scenes around. My favorite sequence involves a downed tree. The foursome of drivers must use a portion of their cargo, the volatile nitroglycerin, to blow up the tree and free up the path to their destination.

It's an absolutely insane plan that involves a Rube Goldberg contraption that will barely allow one of the men a moment to escape the blast radius. And, there's no guarantee that this plan will work. Friedkin communicates all of this via visuals and a minimal amount of dialogue. The tension comes from the editing choices, the intensity of these men in this life or death struggle can be seen in their tense muscles, wide eyes, and rapid breathing. This is an incredible scene and part of a series of ever more breathtaking moments.

The one thing that I cannot reconcile regarding Sorcerer is the title. The title is completely baffling. If there was a reference to a Sorcerer in the movie, I missed it. One rumor that I read in my research was that executives behind the movie chose the title Sorcerer simply because it sounded mystical and since Friedkin was the director of The Exorcist they hoped that a magical title might fool audiences into thinking they were seeing another Exorcist movie. I cannot prove that this is how the title came about but it is as good a theory as any other.

I love Sorcerer. I fell hard for this movie. It's so incredibly tense. It's organically terrifying. Friedkin's direction is precise and thoroughly presented. It's a minimalist movie in terms of indulging in character or world building but it doesn't need much world building to get to the remarkably tense action. I can see where the start of the movie might test the patience of those who are looking for a thrill a minute action movie but if you are someone with patience, you will be rewarded by Sorcerer with a movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat, catching your breath at the slightest notion that the vehicle you are in with these actors might explode.

A great corollary for Sorcerer is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Both films are deeply cynical treatises on desperate, greedy men and the lengths they will go to enrich themselves. Both films are about the human toll such soulless pursuit of enrichment takes on those willing to compromise everything for a few dollars more. Friedkin captures this emptiness by not giving his characters much of any inner life. We know that these men are driven by greed, poverty, and a borderline suicidal drive to atone for their sins and that's all we need to know to get to those incredibly tense driving scenes and set pieces.

Sorcerer was among several William Friedkin movies that were part of our Everyone is a Critic Movie Review Podcast tribute to William Friedkin. We also discussed The Exorcist, The French Connection, Cruising, The Guardian, The Hunted and Bug. My co-host Bob summed up Friedkin incredibly well by pointing out that he's an artist who was unafraid of failing. Indeed, if Friedkin was going to fail, he was going to do it on a grand scale while taking big chances. There is something admirable about that kind of artistry crossed with a remarkable ego, a belief in oneself that creates unquestioning dedication to an idea. Friedkin was part madman and part artist and that's what made him and his work so unforgettable.

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