Customer Reviews

Sorcerer

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you look at all the other reviews, you'll rarely see anything less than five stars and the film deserves it. "SORCERER" falls into that category sometimes referred to as an "undiscovered gem". My reason for giving this DVD one star is technical. Rather than creating a new master from film elements, this DVD was created from an existing full-screen SMPTE television broadcast master. As a result, you miss all of screen left, all of screen right, and a portion of both north and south. "SORCERER" is one of my all-time favorite action films and I can only hope that Friedkin and company release the original, theatrical wide-screen version of this thriller. I am so disappointed by the technical failings of this DVD that I won't buy it unless/until it's re-released in the theatrical format.

William Friedkin (The French Connection) brings us exotic locations and gripping story in Sorcerer, a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 thriller Wages of Fear.

The first hour of this movie seems to be comprised of random events involving four individuals that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The only commonality is that they are all men of dubious character. Probably the most recognizable actor in this film is Roy Schieder, who plays a low level New York gangster participate in a robbery that goes bad, and forces him to flee the country due to the fact he managed to step on some pretty well connected toes. The second man, a French businessman, escapes from the threat of prosecution due to some shady business dealings. The third man, a Middle Eastern terrorist flees his captors after being caught participating in a bombing, and the fourth man is a shady assassin type apparently on the run from repercussion from his last hit.

The key is all four men end up in a South American rat-infested stink hole of a town called Vera Cruz. After awhile, they find their sanctuary has become more of a prison and all begin a desperate search for a way out, but that involves money, a commodity that's in short supply, with the only work available in the area is provided by an oil company that runs a well and is building a pipeline for the bubbling crude. Dangerous work, and the pay is so low that it would take years to earn enough to leave. Salvation for the men comes in a catastrophic disaster, an explosion damaging the well and causing the oil to burn.

The only way to close the well proper for repairs is to blow it up, and the only explosives available are 200 miles away. Turns out the explosives, sticks of nitro, haven't been tended very well, and, in turn, are highly unstable. The company decides to hire four men to drive two trucks to carry the dangerous materials through 200 miles of dangerous jungle, including prehistoric rope and wood bridges, treacherous mountain passes, deadly bandits and swampy roads laden with fallen trees. The suicide mission draws the four men, as the money would allow them to escape the oppressive town. The most intense scenes for me involved the men trying to traverse a rickety, rotting wooden rope suspension bridge over a raging river during a heavy rainstorm. There were times when the truck on the bridge was at such an angle, I thought it would flip right off. And all the actors performed most all their own stunts, adding to the realism of the movie. Do they make it? See the movie and find out. I especially liked the very end. A very nice touch that reminded me of an ending of a certain Alfred Hitchcock movie. Which one? I won't say, as it would give it away.

The movie runs just under two hours, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Friedkin and the actors do a wonderful job in developing tensions between the characters and the environment and the between the characters themselves. The pacing is a bit slow, but it's deliberate, cranking the suspense up, notch by grueling notch.

There are sparse special features, including pretty thorough productions notes and a trailer. If you enjoy thrilling adventure, you will most likely like this movie. I would have happily given this movie five stars but it is only available in the full screen format. Something I didn't understand is the title for the movie. I wasn't able to figure out what it had to do with the movie....

Cookieman108

William Friedkin's remake of "The Wages of Fear" brought a more contemporary, edgy slant to a classic French film. The scale is bigger but the plot remains the same; Roy Scheider plays Jackie Scanlan a member of a crew who accepts what appears to be a suicidal mission; transport nitroglycerin across the treacherous landscape of South America to put out a massive oil fire. All four members of the driving crew have shady pasts making this an ideal chance to escape from the events haunting them at home.

Friedkin's vision and the shooting ran out of control contributing to the unforgettable atmosphere of tension that lingers in the finished film. During shooting Friedkin routinely fired crew members forcing the production company to fly them out of the remote location jungle in the Dominican Republic adding to the film's budget. The replacement members had to be flown in as well. Tensions ran high and tempers flared due to illness, production screw ups and the location which, ironically, created a sense of claustrophobia and isolation. While many prefer the original classic French film, Friedkin's remake creates its own unique signature with the outrageous stunts and dangerous conditions that dogged the crew at every turn.

Don't be deceived by the release date of this DVD. It's exactly the same nonanamorphic pan and scan version released in 1998 with minimal extras. While the release wasn't bad in the infancy of DVD, it needs to be remastered in anamorphic widescreen (this is in full screen meaning it fills a square TV screen the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio is a bit more rectangular and, as a result, about 1/3 of the screen area is chopped off). The source video used for this looks fair but there's lots of analog blemishes (dirt, etc.) and the resolution isn't much better than a high quality videotape.

It could be much improved and "Sorcerer" misses much of its magic due to the cropped presentation and a lack of a commentary track from Friedkin and/or a retrospective featurette with Scheider. An ambitious follow up to Friedkin's "The Exorcist", "Sorcerer" met with mixed critical reaction and an indifferent public reaction (it was made for $22 million almost double its original budget and grossed only $6 millin in the US); that's too bad as this is an exciting and taunt thriller that deserves better.

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound, "Sorcerer" remains a taunt, flawed classic that sound be seen. It stands apart from its source film and on its own. While I love "The Wages of Fear", Friedkin's film captured my imagination when I first saw it in theaters. While this DVD doesn't quite do justice to the film, viewers will get a sense of what Friedkin was trying to accomplish.

I saw this film in the theater and was blown away. It was pulse-pounding, sweaty, hot, real, and disturbing. Roy Scheider's portrayal of a man with nothing and everything left to lose rang true. The French second lead and the other actors became real men caught in a black hole of fate and error and karma and circumstance.

I am a combat veteran of the War in Vietnam and I have a personal register I trust deeply when it comes to depictions of men under mortal stress. This movie worked on every level.

The violence was abrupt and appalling; the indifference of desperate men to the fate of others was accurate and frightening.

I rented the original on VHS and felt at the time and still feel that Friedkin's film is a masterwork of its kind. I have seen each film twice. Sorcerer is the jewel. The original seems ham-handed and sentimental by comparison.

Terror is not an existential experience; it is personal and intimate and painful and surreal.

Sorcerer teaches us to be mindful; a single error of judgement or choice by any one of us can lead us into a deep inexorable hell.

This has been an all-time favorite since I saw it at Scottsdale's long-gone Kachina Theater in 1977. Like many fans, I've found the pan-and-scan DVD that's been around for over a decade underwhelming, but as it's the only way to watch this overlooked masterpiece, I've put up with it.

Great news for fans: William Friedkin is currently supervising a new Blu-ray edition of his film, which should be ready for release at the end of this year, or early next. Stay tuned for Amazon pre-ordering when the official release date is announced!

I bought this wonderful movie and when i put it in, you get a message saying the movie is in a PAN & SCAN format. It is not shown in its orginal aspect ration which 1:66 (You can look that up on IMDB) So all in all, Universal needs to re-release this wonderful movie on dvd with some bells and wistles but then again this is just one guy's opinion. Thank You for reading.

Laurent Bouzerou has put together a SE of Sorcerer for Universal, including a Friedkin commentary, which will be released in the near future, hopefully before the year's end. It will feature an anamorphic widescreen transfer, but I'm not sure if it will have a 5.1 mix. Keep your eyes peeled for an official announcement.

The first time I saw "Sorcerer" I made an unfavorable comparison of it to the original film version, "The Wages of Fear". On further viewing I now find this comparison unfair because "Sorcerer" stands up as a work unto itself. Blotting out all recall of "The Wages of Fear" I found myself caught up in this edge-of-your-seat tale of desperate men transporting nitro in squalid Latin America to put out a refinery fire. Director William Friedkin crisply paces his story for maximum impact. The editing and cinematography also enhance the story. Roy Scheider and the international actors here acquit themselves well. What was most striking to me was the production design of John Box. Awards are not given out for designing squalor. The jungle locales with all their pitfalls is also a major character here. "Sorcerer" is definitely a film to be discovered or in some cases rediscovered.

DVD COMMENT BY GANGARUNNER: One of the most intensely realistic thrillers ever made and William Friedkin's greastest work. Also the greatest REMAKE ever made. But is it formatted in WIDESCREEN with extras and maybe COMMENTARY? Heck no, it's FULLSCREEN with no extras. This movie would get 5 STARS but I give 1 STAR to the STUDIO for releasing this MASTERPIECE in FULLSCREEN. If ever a film begged to be LETTERBOXED, it's this one. I know this film did not do well in it's initial release, but it's obviously a CULT CLASSIC, now. I guess Friedkin is too busy doing another EXORCIST REISSUE- THE VERSION YOU HAVEN"T PAID FOR YET. What a crime.

Maybe Criterion will redo this the way it should have been done. Don't fail to check out their version of the original classic, THE WAGES OF FEAR. A WORD OF WARNING-it's in French.

There are actually two versions of this film attributed to William Friedkin: this is the longer (and more tedious) of the two and is probably the truer 'Friedkin cut'. It contains almost 40 minutes of additional material on the front of the main action, providing explanatory background material for each of the film's main protagonists. It also contains a final twist at the end, which was cut from the other version, released under the story's original title of "Wages of Fear". The later ("Wages of Fear") cut was an altogether grittier version than this earlier ("Sorcerer") one, with all scenes shorter and tighter than their equivalents here and with some reordered to keep the story moving along faster. (The explanatory material from the beginning was edited heavily, and used in bursts of flash-back during the journey scenes, for example.) It also contains a couple of scenes which never made it into this version, which provide an interesting alternative sequence of events from those portrayed here! Sadly, the other version suffers heavily from over-sanitisation (all of the political terrorist connotations have been expunged, for example) and has truly dreadful over-dubbing of all non-English dialogue: a great pity as otherwise the remade "Wages of Fear" would have been an altogether better film than this is. That said, this version has some truly gripping moments, wonderfully enhanced by the haunting Tangerine Dream soundtrack and it is well worth a watch. It is just such a shame that this DVD has been mastered from such a poor quality copy of the print, and a standard 3:2 format one at that. It has had a better job of panning and scanning applied to it than the TV copy of the later "Wages of Fear" received, but it still loses much in this format. Disappointing, overall.