Get Your Reps In: The Fire Rises in William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer”

Sorcerer (1977)

In the late, great William Friedkin’s tenacious remake of The Wages of Fear (1953), four criminals truck nitroglycerin across a Central American jungle to stymie an oil field fire. True to Friedkin’s gripping, reality-devout style, the film is punctuated left and right with molten, sky-scorching columns of fire, like chemical reactions between heaven and hell.

Sorcerer was the director’s “anything you want, Mr. Friedkin” cash-in on the unparalleled success of The Exorcist. Nearly 50 years later, you can still feel the maniacal lack of compromise across the greasy, terrifying, transcendent two hours, as every character is one worn tire tread or loose pebble away from detonation.

With a Tangerine Dream score (their first for a Hollywood production) halfway between a classical fugue and a wound throb and a Roy Scheider performance that testifies to his undersung ‘70s stardom, Sorcerer is one of Friedkin’s finest hours. And all that magnificent fire? It’s among the many things (sharks, dancing, youth) that contemporary CGI still cannot quite approximate. Hollywood, Sept. 10.

ALSO PLAYING:

Academy: The Virgin Suicides (1999), Sept. 8-14. Scanners (1981), Sept. 8-14. Cinema 21: Sabrina (1954), Sept. 9. Cinemagic: Royal Warriors (1986), Sept. 7. Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Sept. 8, 9 and 12. Chinatown (1974), Sept. 9, 10 and 13. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Sept. 10 and 11. When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Sept. 8, 9 and 14. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), Sept. 10. Clinton: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Sept. 8. Hollywood: Fatal Attraction (1987), Sept. 8-14. UHF (1989), Sept. 9. Body Heat (1981), Sept. 11-14.