Director: Julien Leclerq
Writers: Georges Arnaud, Hamid Hilioua, Julien Leclerq
Stars: Franck Gastambide, Alban Lenoir, Sofiane Zermani
Synopsis: In order to prevent a deadly explosion, an illicit crack team has 24 hours to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerine across a desert laden with danger.
Has there ever been a modern remake as misguided as Julien Leclercq’s readaptation of Georges Arnaud’s The Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur)? The question begs to be asked because there’s nothing retained from Arnaud’s text and Henri Georges-Clouzot’s 1954 adaptation, apart from the nitroglycerin of it all. Of course, some will say pitting a remake against its original source material is unfair, especially when the sociopolitical context is different, and filmmaking techniques have evolved. They may be right: holding the original to such a pedestal can, at times, draw unfair critiques between a modern, fresher take on the source material when pitted against the classic.
But when the film was already reinterpreted for an American audience through William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, questions of Julien Leclercq’s latest take on the book (and, by extension, film adaptations) are raised, especially when the entire film looks and feels like it wants to be a Fast & Furious knockoff instead. The movie even begins with a massive car chase in the desert as we get introduced to Fred (Franck Gastambide) carrying a supply of life-saving vaccines to a small village for Dr. Clara (Ana Girardot). The two are romantically involved but are working to bring medical supplies to an unnamed village while terrorist groups attempt to kill them in their journey toward the village.
The action is shot and staged with the energy of a Justin Lin-directed F&F film as if Leclercq used these movies as the primary point of reference instead of looking at what Georges-Clouzot and Friedkin brought to the table to reinterpret the material. Credit where credit is due: at least the action sequences are competently shot and staged, bringing some form of energy to an otherwise monotonously dull picture. The film’s best sequence involves Fred and his brother, Alex (Alban Lenoir), as they attempt to defuse mines (by sandwalking), with Fred ultimately stepping on a large anti-tank mine. The tension is palpable, and it’s the only time in which the movie feels like it has any connection with The Wages of Fear.
The rest of the film is all over the place – after its odd F&F beginnings, it moves to then flashback to a James Bond-esque spy thriller where we learn more about Fred’s past as a bodyguard, with a (predictable) mission going wrong, which leads Alex to be imprisoned. Following this, an unnamed (shady) company reaches out to Fred and promises freedom for Alex if he helps them on the transportation of nitroglycerin from an NGO outpost to the village, where an oil well is about to explode and destroy everything in its sight. The only way to prevent cataclysmic destruction is to use nitroglycerin, a terribly unstable substance that can topple anything in its distance if not handled properly.
Of course, the mission doesn’t go as smoothly as the company says it will, with terrorists on their tail and an unstable, unpredictable route making it difficult to control the nitroglycerin inside the trucks. The route is what mainly makes Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and – by extension – Sorcerer such riveting pieces of anxiety-inducing cinema, but it’s the relationship between the main characters that ultimately gains your investment in those pictures. In Leclercq’s version, the relationship between the main characters is so thinly developed that Leclercq’s (and co-writer Hamid Hlioua’s) attempts to give each protagonist some form of humanity by recycling the most egregious clichés.
Every character arc is seen a mile away, from the unbrotherly love shown by Alex (sucker-punching Fred as soon as they reunite) to their realization that they shouldn’t hold disdain for one another as Fred steps on the mine. And how about the film’s sole female character, reduced to being a sex object for Fred but isn’t given any form of agency or development beyond her attachment with the protagonist? Girardot tries her best to elevate the shoddy material she’s given, but unfortunately can’t overcome the trappings Leclercq and Hlioua put her in.
It gets even more ridiculous when the film ends in the vein of a heist thriller, with endless double-crosses that ultimately hamper its emotionally stirring end for one of its protagonists, who already had his fate tattooed on his face as soon as the movie opens. Leclercq doesn’t even know how to effectively blend genres together that he attempts to riff on a plethora of action franchises instead of making his Wages of Fear adaptation an important reinterpretation of Arnaud’s original book, while also celebrating the legacy marked by Clouzot and Friedkin’s adaptations.
Making it more action-driven isn’t necessarily a problem if the character relationships and the core of Arnaud’s story remain intact and as thrilling as they were. But there are little thrills to be had in this hackneyed version of a literary and cinematic classic, one that still inspires some of the best filmmakers working today, seventy years after its release.
