Sorcerer

This week seems to full of films I'm reminded that I've not seen. Sorcerer is one near the top of the heap. Love Roy Scheider and still have not seen all his films. I hang my head in shame.

Most Biblical movies were long If I Recall.

seen A Clockwork Orange. In all honesty, the movie was weird and silly

Anyone else a fan?

Sorcerer is awesome, and you're awesome for making this thread.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, it's criminally underrated.

When people mention great films of the 70s - you hear Godfather, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, The Conversation, Dog Day, ect... but NEVER Scorcerer. Why?

William Friedkin has his own theory of why it flopped... because the main role, played by Roy Scheider, was originally intended for Steve McQueen.

Friedkin declined to grant McQueen's request to have McQueen's wife credited as Associate Producer, so McQueen turned down the role. Friedkin felt (and probably correctly so) that had it starred a movie star like McQueen, it would have been a mainstream success.

But personally, I feel Scheider did an AWESOME job.

Oh wow! I had no idea that McQueen was intended for the lead!

I think the mix of Star Wars (1977) coming out and Sorcerer having the confusing title of Sorcerer maybe kept people away. I think Scheider did great as well!

Yeah, I'm sure Star Wars + the its title had some impact.

Not gonna lie, before I had ever seen it, I originally thought it was about some evil wizard lol.

Sorcerer

NO SPOILERS!

Come! Come my friends to South America and enjoy the beautiful jungles, the glorious mountains, and, hey, why not take it all in on a scenic, leisurely drive on our well-kept roadways.

What an incredible and intense film!

I have been up and down with nominations from cricket and at this time THIS as been my favorite so far.
From the opening story lines of the men and why they are in the jungles in South America; the tension is strung tight til we find them, scorched, nearly broken and desperate in a small town that is part of the pipeline and the abhorrent dangers involved in working on it.
Soon, the stakes are raised when a shipment of highly volatile nitro needs to be driven, by broken down monsters of trucks, some 2 hundred miles.
And I gotta tell ya, considering all the CGI, over the top, suspension of belief situations that play out in recent films, they have nothing compared to that final ride through jungle, up side of mountains, and - holy crap, that swinging bridge they had to get over!!

As a story and as a movie, this is really an intense and engulfing ride that also pulls you into the sweltering heat, the pain, frustration and the nerve-racking fear that the characters are subjected to throughout.

I won't go into the ending and will simply say it was befitting for the arduous journey of this story.

Roy Scheider was his usual best and he had an excellent crew and locals to really bring all that this movie had to offer.

As more people watch this, I'll happily go into the ambiance and details that also added to my watching pleasure.

Till then, f@ckin d@mn good nomination, @cricket!! and an excellent start for my movie watching of this HoF.

This is actually one of the movies we have in the 70s Hall of Fame and was nominated by cricket. Excellent film, and yes, the title is VERY misleading. Have not seen Wages of Fear and, of course, folks are back and forth about which is better, so no idea on where I would be for that one.
Here's what posted about it:


Another point that was touched on in the thread was the composition of a lot of shots in the film. A lot of great imagery and setting up of individual shots in so many different scenes.

Sorcerer (1978)

This was amazing on so many different levels that I don't know where to begin!

Beautiful filmed! And I don't mean just the lush jungle and I don't mean fancy camera work...I mean each scene starts with an establishing shot that looks like an award winning National Geographic photo. Stunning. Being a long time still photographer myself, I noticed how special the camera shots were set up.

This is one of my favorites shots:

Look at how the camera is set up to shoot through a window that gives an illusion of a picture frame around the photo, how cool!
I love that diagonal line that runs from the soldier in the foreground to the plane debris, then to the plane in the background. That gives depth to the shot....

Damn! that shot alone says so much.

The soldier is kicked back casually drinking a soda pop while holding a gun, that tells us about the kind of place it is...We can see the remnants of a crashed plane that no one has bothered to clean up...as another plane lands, in this forgotten out of the way hell hole place.

The entire movie was like that and for me that was even better than the story itself. I was in a visual heaven!

The story was sophisticated. It sort of reminded me of The Guns of Navarone or The Dirty Dozen, where a rag tag band of misfits must go on a dangerous mission and risk their lives....but this is way different in that there are no heroes here and that's rare for films like this...The four men involved are despicable. It's not like their rouges but still have a good side, they're flat out murders and hardened thieves. The film makes an analogy that they've been sent to hell on Earth and there's no happy ending for these condemned men.

And...OMG! the special effects were huge, I don't recall ever seeing any practical effects done on this grand of scale. I mean they blow up an oil well with a monstrous fire ball!....and the trucks over the river on a swinging bridge, damn that was real! Real trucks, real bridge, real river in the real jungle! I've never seen anything like that before.

Everything is so impressive in this film. I could tell those jungles were real and not on a studio lot as I've been to the tropics and that's what they look like.

No CG here, and we'll never see a film made this big! It must have cost a fortune, the detail is amazing.

This is going to be one of my favorite films in this HoF.

I was actually reading reviews of this yesterday after scarletlion mentioned it on "Guess the movie from the Screenshot" game and put it on my to watch list.. a lot of the reviews say it is better than the earlier film