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| Sorcerer |
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 (10/10)
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Runtime: 118 |
| Public Rating: 8.25 (16 votes) |
Director: William Friedkin |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: thrill/ action/ drama |
Year: 1977 |
| Writer(s): Georges Arnaud (novel "The Wages of Fear") & Walon Green (screen |
| Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers |
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Starring Roy Scheider, Francisco Rabal, Amidou, Bruno Cremer, Jean-Luc Bideau, Nick Discenza, Ramon Bieri, Chico Martinez, Karl John
In these days of computer generated special effects it is refreshing and awe-inspiring to visit the work of a master of cinema such as William Friedkin, whose French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973) put the stamp on suspenseful thrillers. I had not seen the original, from which 29 minutes were cut, and in this, its first Australian release with the extra footage, I was kept uneasily teetering on the edge of my seat by this tightly packed, intensely realistic thriller. The beginning scenes are so fast and unconnected that they require some effort on the part of the viewer to grasp just what is happening. That effort is well worth it, for later in the film and especially in the very last scene, Friedkin’s genius in separately weaving the remorseless karmic threads of the characters allow the audience easily to create the unseen scenario following the end of the film. After the stomach-churning extremes of sheer terror and lip-biting anticipation experienced as though we ourselves were in it, the realisation we have is searing. It’s brilliant.
After a brief montage of the stone carving of a grimacing sorcerer’s face under whose apparent aegis the events that unfold take place, the film hits the ground running with a fatal shooting. The assassin, whom we later find out is called Nilo (Francisco Rabal), disappears while a band plays on in a square in a South American city. A hand-held camera here, as in other action sequences, increases the intensity. Through other unrelated acts of violence we see the background of four desperate men and how they come to end up in the South American hellhole of Porvenir, a village where the labourers of a near-by oil refinery subsist. In quick succession we see a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem involving Kassem (Amidou); a partner’s shooting suicide in Paris after a failed business venture, causing Victor Manzon (Bruno Cremer) to run; and a mobsters’ attack on a Elizabeth, New Jersey church resulting in a spectacular car crash from which only Jackie Scanlon, (Roy Scheider) escapes alive. Porvenir is a place where the local bar is appropriately named El Corsario (The Pirate) and a shot of a drunken barfly is segued insouciantly into a shot of the barkeep spraying futilely with fly spray. In Porvenir new arrivals are not questioned on their past, but the local police exploit their situation by blackmail and extortion. It makes their prison all the more galling and suffocating. Low wages, appallingly squalid conditions and needing to pay the authorities to get around their illegal status creates a situation where desperate men will do anything to escape.
A horrendous explosion at the oil field 200 miles distant, possibly caused by rebel guerrillas, results in the deaths of many of the workers. It sparks a violent protest by the grieving people of Porvenir as well as igniting an unquenchable fire at the derrick. Dynamite is needed to douse the fire, but only some highly unstable nitroglycerine in mouldy boxes is available. In the scene where the explosives expert gingerly withdraws his hand, dripping with pure nitroglycerine and flicks it ever so carefully outside the explosives hut, the resulting explosion is terrifying because we see just how volatile this nitro is. Volunteers are required for the suicide mission to drive two trucks with the nitro on sawdust beds 200 miles through rugged jungle trails to the oil field at Poza Rica. Nilo, Jackie, Kassem and Victor, all now known by other names, end up being chosen, with Victor negotiating $10,000 each and legal residency as their price.
From this point on there is no relief in the tension, which continues to build with little respite till the end. Their first frantic task is to cannibalise all the decrepit trucks in Porvenir for parts to engineer workable vehicles. They eventually start off with their perilous cargo and the driven purpose of each these men, not aided by political and ethnic hatred between the Zionist Nilo and the Arab Kassem, pushes them through exhaustion and impossible terrain on their way. Coming to a fork in the trail, with some conflict over the map, the men ask a wizened Indian, who has the bland all-knowing look of a sorcerer, which way to Poza Rica. “Poza Rica is dead,” is his reply.
What follows are some of the most extraordinary white-knuckle stunt scenes I have ever seen. The trucks drive growling like tortured beasts on cliff-side roads, their wheels hanging over the edges. They sway alarmingly over rope and timber bridges frayed and moulded, only feet from the rushing torrential river, through driving and relentless rain, all at 4 mph and with the boxes of nitro sliding gently in the back. How they deal with the trigger-happy rebel guerrillas they meet and an apparently insurmountable giant tree-fall across their path is electric with suspense. Qualities of ingenuity and single-minded persistence force us to care for these men just as through the two-day journey their necessary teamwork forges a bond between them. Moments of grace become precious and the surreal elements of some of the final scenes – particularly Roy Scheider in the weird dream landscape of wind-sculpted sandstone mirroring his inner journey to an existential question - are amazing as exhaustion, unremitting tension and hallucinations take their toll. Surely, after what they’ve been through, these men deserve redemption. But as this movie does not compromise all the way through, nor does it at the end and we are forced to accept the reality it portrays.
For sheer gut-wrenching screenplay, for astonishingly visceral cinematography, for a superb musical score by Tangerine Dream, for the grittiness of the acting and all in the fabulous richness and overlaid texture of technicolour, this movie is hard to beat. To this reviewer at least, in terms of cinema experience, modern day computer graphics and simulated special effects simply cannot measure up to the sure sorcerer’s touch of a director such as William Friedkin.
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