The Wages of Fear (2024)
Directed by Julien Leclercq
The story, in the original 1953 French film version of Georges Arnaud’s novel “Le Salaire de la Peur,” went like this: A number of European refugees wither in a remote, flea-bitten South American town from which they are too poor to escape. An accident at an oil field hundreds of miles away causes a fire that only a truckload of nitroglycerin can extinguish, but the nitro has to be trucked over mountains and through jungles to reach the oil field. The oil company recruits truck drivers for the suicide mission, giving the Europeans a chance to make an extravagant payday if they can survive the trip. The film follows their journey as they encounter and triumph over a series of roadblocks: a poorly-supported mountain hairpin curve, an arroyo filled with oil from a leaking pipeline, and an enormous road-blocking boulder. Only one man survives, but he delivers the goods.
The original film (English title “The Wages of Fear”), directed by Hennri-Georges Clouzot, is regarded as a world classic of cinema. The danger and action of the journey is secondary to the psychological development, as the characters are tested. Not all of them pass the test.
In 1977, America director William Friedkin made “Sorcerer,” supposedly not a remake of the Clouzot movie but based directly on the Arnaud novel. (The odd title — absurdly, the name of one of the trucks — was probably meant to support the notion that this was not an attempt to remake the nearly sacred 1953 film.) The 1977 version provides a backstory for the main character played by Roy Scheider, fresh off his starring role in “Jaws”: He is in the end-of-the-earth village because he is fleeing from the Mafia, whom he pissed off back in his American city. Aside from that perhaps unnecessary introduction, the film adds an additional hurdle, the task of crossing a river during a storm on a ridiculously inadequate rope bridge. It’s a memorable sequence, providing the primary image for the movie’s poster.
At the time, there was a mixture of skepticism and excitement. Could the popular director of “The French Connection”and “The Exorcist” do justice to the story and even come close to the original film? Most people thought the answer was no, but they respected the attempt. Today its reputation has improved. It’s certainly watchable, and it doesn’t disgrace the source or the Clouzot version.
Now we come to the movie at hand. The 2024 French version, directed by action-movie hack Julien Leclercq, is not a terrible movie. It takes the core of the original idea — driving trucks loaded with nitro through challenging terrain — strips the story of its psychological elements, and adds the maximum possible amount of vehicle chases, shootings, and fistfights to leave us with a mediocre action movie. If you compare the three illustrations in this review, showing the casts of each of the three versions, you’ll understand immediately. The first two versions feature desperate men who get their hands dirty in the commission of their task. The present version features determined men of action and, irrelevantly, a pretty blonde woman. It includes everything you’d expect from a by-the-numbers action movie and none of the psychological development and tension of the others.
Without the use of the title and the core of the original book, this production would be entirely anonymous. The taking of these elements from the patrimony (to use a European concept) of world cinema only invites a very unflattering comparison. Its like if Quentin Tarantino made a three-hour long exploitation movie about cops set in modern Las Vegas and called it The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. You’re never going to win that fight, which no one asked you to pick in the first place. Sit down.