William Friedkin’s brilliant 1977 thriller filmSorcererfollowed Friedkin’s blockbuster successesThe ExorcistandThe French Connection, the latter of which brought Friedkin a Best Director Oscar, as Friedkin was then among Hollywood’s most powerful filmmakers, alongside Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg.
A remake of the classic 1953 French thriller filmThe Wages of Fear,Sorcerertells the story of four desperate men from disparate backgrounds who accept a perilous, if not suicidal, job to drive two nitroglycerin-filled trucks across hazardous terrain for an oil company, which needs the explosives to quell a massive oil well fire.
Originally intended as a low-budget film, a bridge project for Friedkin until Friedkin was ready to undertake another large-scale production,Sorcerer, which eventually carried a budget in excess of $20 million, became a commercial and critical failure for Friedkin, as the film’s release was plagued by both the film’s bafflingly supernatural-sounding title, which confused audiences, and the lack of a big-name star.
However, while the commercial failure ofSorcerer, which grossed less than $10 million at the domestic box office, damaged Friedkin’s Hollywood standing, which was further weakened by the commercial and critical failure of Friedkin’s controversial 1980 crime thriller filmCruising,Sorcererhas subsequently, more than forty-five years after its release, received an enthusiastic reappraisal by critics and filmmakers and is now rightfully regarded as a masterpiece, if not thegreatest film of Friedkin’s career.
Four Strangers in Hell
InSorcerer, four outcastswith various criminal histories are each banished to Porvenir, a primitive-seeming, remote Colombian village, where the four men, in stark contrast to their previous lives, live in poverty and seclusion with fake identities, as each of the men faces various forms of condemnation in the outside world.
Sorcererstars Roy Scheider, who had gained a degree of stardom withJawsand received an Oscar nomination forThe French Connection, as Jackie Scanlon, a New Jersey-based Irish-American gangster who, in the film’s opening sequence, robs a church and shoots a priest, whose mob boss brother vows revenge against Scanlon, who is joined in Porvenir by an Arab terrorist, a corrupt French banker, and a Mexican contract killer.
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Despite their fugitive status, the four men desperately want to escape Porvenir, which is virtually controlled by an American oil company. After a terrorist attack produces a massive explosion and fire that takes the company’s primary well offline, the company seeks drivers to transport several boxes of degraded dynamite sticks, which leak nitroglycerin, to the site of the fire, and Scanlon and the other fugitives immediately accept this diabolical assignment, for the stated purpose of being able to earn enough money to gain passage away from their current state of purgatory.
The four men are divided into two trucks, each of which is loaded with more than enough dynamite to treat the oil well fire, as Scanlon, who is paired with the Mexican assassin in one truck, and the other men realize that this is because the company doesn’t think that both trucks will survive the over 200-mile journey across extremely inhospitable terrain, as their cargo is so volatile that even the slightest hiccup could kill them.
The Greatest Action Sequence Ever Filmed
While the action scenes thatWilliam Friedkin presentsinSorcererare indeed spectacular on a purely physical and technical level, the film’s action scenes are equally impressive on a psychological level, as the film’s jaw-dropping action sequences perfectly, and nearly wordlessly, encapsulate the film’s central themes, in terms of the extremes of human behavior and the limits that man will go to for survival, even if they have very little to live for.
The purest representation of this is contained in a sequence in which the two trucks, one after the other, in the midst of a violent rainstorm, have to traverse a rotted suspension bridge, which tilts the trucks from side to side, teetering on the edge of disaster, as while the drivers of the trucks, Scanlon and French banker Manzon, try to avoid the gaps on the rickety bridge, their passengers try to guide the trucks to safety without falling into the rising river below.
The now legendary bridge sequence, which cost over $3 million and took Friedkin several months to complete, showcases Friedkin as a consummate visual storyteller and filmmaking daredevil, as the sequence not only reflects the degree to which the characters are willing to gamble with their lives, in the face of seemingly assured disaster but also how Friedkin was willing to risk everything, figuratively speaking, to achieve the effect of breathtaking authenticity and suspense.
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William Friedkin’s Favorite Film
WhileWilliam Friedkin was justifiably proudof his best-known films,The ExorcistandThe French Connection, over the past decade, Friedkin repeatedly stated that his favorite film of his wasSorcerer, one of his least successful films.
Sorcereris emblematic of why the 1970s is considered, arguably, to be the greatest film decade in history, not only because of the films but also because of how bold “New Hollywood” filmmakers like Friedkin were willing to essentially sacrifice their careers to make films that would only be fully appreciated in future decades.
Bleak, nihilistic, and entirely uncompromising,Sorcerer, whichQuentin Tarantino has listedas being one of the greatest films of all time, deserves to be regarded as both a great film and perhaps the most impressive example of both Friedkin’s filmmaking mastery and raw courage.
