The Bad Magic Builds

One of the most underrated films of all time has been getting its due, gradually over the past fifteen years or so. This year, Criterion is releasing its own blu-ray of 1977's Sorcerer. I'd say it's a tough call whether this or Michael Mann's Thief is the manliest procedural film of all time. I first reviewed Sorcerer back in 2015. I liked it then but I love it now.

There are different ways a movie can benefit from multiple viewings. With Vertigo, the second viewing shifts your perspective because you know more about a character's motives. Sorcerer is different because it's a film that takes a while to really tell you what it's about. The original trailer (seen above) doesn't really tell you, either, so a lot of people would've gone in more or less blind. That creates a kind of tension that's absent on subsequent viewings and I found I was better able to appreciate the backstories director William Friedkin gave to his disparate and desperate four men. Four bad men--an American gangster, an Italian hitman, an Arab terrorist, and a crooked French banker--wind up together in the jungle with the job of transporting volatile explosives. Without any moral centre, you go in knowing all the characters are working without a net. There's no reason for any god or angel to look out for these bastards.

I love the misdirection of the title. There may be no literal magic in the story but Friedkin conjures it with editing and Tangerine Dream's eerie score. The sense of these guys caught in a horrible spell is perfectly counterbalanced by the uncompromising realism of the shooting locations and set pieces. And man, that fucking bridge sequence has to be among the most masterful pieces of cinema ever committed to film. The tension is just unparalleled as you watch these massive trucks going over that impossibly rickety old bridge in pouring rain and wind. Every snap of a wooden plank, every extreme sway of the bridge that threatens to dump one of these decrepit monsters into the drink, is absolutely captivating.

Sorcerer is available on The Criterion Channel.