SORCERER

(June 1977, U.S.)

William Friedkin's SORCERER was practically doomed from the start when it was released in the summer of 1977. For starters, it's an existential American remake of what's generally considered a far superior French-Italian thriller, Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953). It also contained no English language speaking parts for the first sixteen minutes of the film, which put off audiences, thinking they'd been duped into paying to see a foreign subtitled film and causing walk-outs from the theater. Because of this, theaters were actually prompted to issue a disclaimer on their lobby cards which read,

"YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE. To dramatize the diverse backgrounds of the principal characters in 'Sorcerer', two of the opening sequences were filmed in the appropriate foreign languages – with sub-titles in English. Other than these opening scenes, 'Sorcerer' is an English language film."

Honestly, I don't know whether this was just simply a smart business tactic, or a pathetic appeal to lame-brain audience members who couldn't sum up enough patience and intelligence to sit though a lousy sixteen minutes of subtitled dialogue (regardless, it did nothing to improve the film's performance). Its title was also confusing, leading many to believe that it suggested an element a supernatural's likeness to his previous 1973 hit, THE EXORCIST. Finally, what really sealed the nail on the coffin of SORCERER was the fact that this little science fiction movie called STAR WARS had opened just a month prior and was really fucking things up for just about nearly every other movie released that summer. I can't say I really blame the people of that time choosing to ignore other films of that summer, even the new James Bond installment, because the dominating presence of STAR WARS was impossible to avoid. I mean, why so see a confusing film like SORCERER when you can keep seeing a galaxy far, far away again and again and again all summer?

Truth be told, SORCERER is a truly brilliant and visionary (and expensive!) film told with a director's passion in the heart of one of the world's most hellish places, or "the asshole of the world", much like Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW two years later. It's story centers around four various men considered outcasts from the worlds in which they came, meeting together by chance in the god-forsaken village of Porvenir, somewhere in Latin America. The opening prologue of the film depicts each of their dire circumstances which forced them to abandon their country. The American who goes by the name of "Dominguez" (played by Roy Scheider, who also starred in Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION), is on the hit list by a New Jersey gangster, who's church he robbed and was then the only survivor of a car crash immediately following the robbery. What little economy the impoverished village has is highly dependent on an American oil company's production there. One day, without any warning, an oil well explodes, setting the stage for what will become the heart of the rest of the story. The only way to extinguish the raging fire is to use dynamite (I still don't understand how that works!). The only dynamite available has been sitting around, improperly stored for years, causing the nitroglycerin inside to become highly unstable and explosive at even the slightest vibration. The only way to bring this solution to the oil company two hundred miles away is to use trucks and to pay four dumb schmucks (I mean, men) to drive these highly dangerous vehicles across Mother Nature's worst terrain.

Embarking on their perilous journey, the four men must cooperate and overcome obstacles and hazards such as a downed dense tree and an extremely unstable wooden suspension bridge dangling above a raging river during a violent storm (see the movie poster's image). If the film's promotional attempt is to take its viewer into the realm and heart of suspense, then the bridge scene alone doesn't fail to disappoint. As you watch the bridge continuously teeter and totter above the water to the point of devastation, you cannot, for the life of you, believe that these men are actually accomplishing their attempts of survival. They all survive the bridge, but fate dictates that only one of them will survive in the end, and it's (perhaps predictably) Roy Scheider's American character who triumphs in the end by arriving at the scene on foot carrying just one box of the remaining nitroglycerin. And just when we think his life will finally turn around for the better with his newfound financial gain and readiness to leave the dreaded village, irony dictates that he's inevitably been betrayed and will be killed by the very gangsters he had previously escaped.

Remake or not, and despite its box office failure against STAR WARS, SORCERER is a highly overlooked classic of suspense, in my opinion. It's a film of high concept (perhaps even self-indulgent) commitment and visual crafting, accompanied by breathtaking cinematography of the dangers of the jungle and the mountains. The story's life and death suspense manages to combine the drama behind the desperation of human behavior and torment with its special effects, particularly the suspension bridge scene, which practically dominates the entire film's depiction of the hazards of the jungle, rain, flood, wind and fire. Roy Scheider continues to demonstrate why he was one of the best damn actors of the 1970s, beyond the great white shark. SORCERER will never be the high point of Friedkin's career, as THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST were, but such comparison are unfair, if not outright wrong. If nothing else, the film continued to demonstrate the relentless toughness that Friedkin demonstrated in so many of the American films he gave us in the '70s and '80s (even the ones that didn't do so well at the box office...but who's counting?).

Favorite line or dialogue:

Jackie Scanlon: "Where am I going?"
Vinnie: "All I can say is it's a good place to lay low."
Jackie: "Why?"
Vinnie: "It's the kind of place nobody wants to go looking."