Sorcerer (1977)

I realise this review is 40-years late, but I only saw Sorcerer at the weekend.

The film for the uninitiated was a remake of The Wages of Fear (or a re-adaptation of the source novel), about truck drivers carrying unstable nitroglycerin over treacherous jungle roads.

At the time it was released, Sorcerer was considered a box office failure - partly attributed to the fact that it had been released around the same time as Star Wars. Symbolically it can be seen as American New Wave Cinema being replaced by the Hollywood Blockbuster - or art versus commerce.

Having seen both, I'd put it down to Sorcerer not being a particularly likable film.

There's a lot in Sorcerer to be admired. Some of the sequences - particularly those on a storm-swept wooden suspension bridge - are nail-bitingly tense. There's a final hallucinatory sequence, which had me wondering if the characters were actually in Hell all along, which is also quite brilliant.

And of course there's the score by Tangerine Dream, which suits the film perfectly.

The problem for me was the characters. After a bunch of overlong introductory sequences, I didn't really know anything about the characters - and I didn't care too either. I think I had more emotional connection with my popcorn than I did with anyone on the screen. Watching them in peril was like watching a trapeze artist - yes, you're going to gasp if it looks like he is going to fall - but that's simple human empathy at work, nothing deeper.

It's an interesting film, and well worth catching on the big screen if possible, but if this was the direction in which 70s cinema was going, I'm happy to cheer on the usurper.