Review: Sorcerer Is Quite Possibly The Most Tense Film Ever Made
- Sep 28, 2017
- 2 min read
By the time Sorcerer comes to a close there’ll be no fingernails left to bite, no teeth left to grind and you’ll finally remember to breathe. Look up tension in a dictionary and you’ll likely find this movies poster.
A man is assassinated in Vera Cruz, a bomb goes off in Jerusalem and the perpetrators are either slain or captured in the ensuing raid, though one of them escapes. In Paris, Victor (Bruno Cremer) find himself embroiled in fraud and bribery as his company crumbles, all on his tenth wedding anniversary, and that’s just the start of his problems. At a wedding in New Jersey Jackie (Roy Scheider) and his gang steal from a powerful mobster before a car crash and high tempers ruin everything. He flees the wrath of the mob and finds himself in a less than stellar part of Nicaragua. A town whose economy is dependent on an oil well 200 miles away. And it is at this oil well that a mobster, an assassin, a terrorist and a white collar criminal find themselves, all on the run from their past lives. But, when said well catches fire and requires high explosives to be extinguished, the four men put their lives on the line to move highly unstable nitroglycerine along some of the most dangerous roads on the planet. Hopefully the reward is worth it.
Sorcerer is an interesting movie, and what I consider to be the most tension filled, nerve wracking film I’ve ever seen. While the start is somewhat slow and the actual plot doesn’t kick off until the halfway point, the moment cases of unstable explosives are introduced things go from about five to somewhere in the realm of one hundred. The very first scene dealing with explosives slowly builds, introducing the dangerous chemicals which must be moved. The characters within treat them with such reverence that the tension is palpable, and that’s just the beginning.
Never before have I seen so much sweat in a movie. Be it from the rainforest heat or the stress of moving such a dangerous load, it comes in droves, and the men willing to undergo such a thing must be praised. Scheider handily steals each of his scenes but the rest of the cast are decent, even if they don’t have as much to do. Cremer is the only other actor with any real lines, the rest mostly look scared or stoic but they do it well. It doesn’t hurt that the film sports a seriously cool soundtrack as well.
Do you like tension? Do you like to feel on edge for just under an hour? Then Sorcerer is the film for you. As crappy trucks drive along roads with rock walls on one side and cliffs on the other, as they cross rickety bridges and weave through jungle paths, knowing that every bump could be their last, as torrential rain turns roads to mud, you’ll feel like you’re there with the drivers and if that isn’t good film making, I don’t know what is.
Comments