"Sorcerer" (1977)

I thought I'd heard it before, but my amigo The Van Man, alerted me to the podcast of WTF with Marc Maron, where director William Friedkin speaks of this little seen or underground famous movie. First off, Friedkin is a total dick. You should never, ever, ever...don't care what era you live in endanger actors or crew. He laughs about it now, but you really want to bust him in the chops circa 2016. It's also not enough to dismiss it by saying he put his life in danger as well. Good, go kill yourself then.
That said, he reminds me of Werner Herzog in "Fitzcarraldo" a filmmaker attempting to bring a steamship over a hill which leads him to a sense of madness. Much like Friedkin, Herzog had a reputation of odd behavior to get the result. To a production, it may seem the ends justifies the means. However, in today's society, jeopardizing anyone for a movie is silly and should be criminal charges for that.

"Sorcerer", a remake of "Wages Of Fear", is fascinating as it takes a hardcore John Huston like stance on man and humanity. We're first introduced to four characters from different parts of the world, that end up in hiding in some Dominican country. The icons of German fascism are clear in the oil well that is in the jungle. The men there stand out to the destitute natives. They are a stranger hiding in a strange land. When an accident destroys the wells, a call for volunteers to close the disaster is put to the people of the town. Desperate for the money, the fours ex-patriots are assigned the duty, only to learn they are hauling highly volatile nitroglycerin over 200 miles of rough terrain.

Yeah, it's a man's movie. Full of greasy, grinding gears, sweat and mud. And people don't live. Had this been a few years earlier, you almost sense a Sam Peckinpah-esque mess. Instead, it's a great combination of thrills and tragedy. Every man is introduced with a empathetic situation to their lives that lead them to this town. Most will have to find a way out. And, it was about working together to get there. Which, as Friedkin had mentioned in the podcast, seems to be the universal theme of our world. We all need to work together so that shit don't blow up. That's pretty cool.

Check this movie out if you get a chance. I think it's one of Friedkin's accessible movies. Unless "Cruisin'" or the "The Boys In The Band" are more your...heh heh...flavor.