Four ex-pats hiding from their criminal pasts take a dangerous job hauling nitroglycerin over bad road in order to get enough money to claw their way out of this one-horse town in the South American jungle.
Because I watched them back to back, it's almost impossible for me to not compare this to Wages of Fear. Let me start by saying, both movies are excellent. You cannot go wrong if you decide to only watch one, no matter which one you choose. Personally, I'd give the edge to Sorcerer for tension, only because of the rope bridge scenes, which are absolutely harrowing and must have been a total nightmare to film. William Friedkin, the director, shot on location in the Dominican Republic and the rain and mud and heat are palpable. Considering the Arctic temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic region right now, it was nice to pretend to be warm again.
Some other differences: Sorcerer includes little mini-prologues of backstory for the four main characters, where Wages leaves them open for interpretation. Sorcerer shifts the oil company management to the local regime, instead of the USA, removing Wages' commentary on colonialism. It changes the circumstances of a major character death as well as the ending, which is still bleak but less existential. Basically, if you read my review of Wages and thought, "sounds good but a little too French," Sorcerer is for you. It's also streaming in its entirety on YouTube.
Hilariously, this opened the same weekend in 1977 as Star Wars: A New Hope and got immediately shunted to the bottom of the box office. It was enormously over budget and a huge flop which just goes to show that timing is everything and that you shouldn't use a box office gross as a marker of quality. This is a great film and I look forward to forcing my friends to watch it.
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