A hallucinatory journey into the heart of darkness, William Friedkin’s pulse-pounding reimagining of the suspense classic The Wages of Fear was dismissed upon its release, only to be recognized decades later as one of the boldest auteur statements of the New Hollywood. In a remote Latin American village, four desperate fugitives—a New Jersey gangster (Roy Scheider), a Mexican assassin (Francisco Rabal), an unscrupulous Parisian businessman (Bruno Cremer), and an Arab terrorist (Amidou)—take on a seemingly doomed mission: transporting two trucks full of highly explosive nitroglycerin through the treacherous jungle. Aided by Tangerine Dream’s otherworldly synth score, Friedkin turns each bump in the road into a tour de force of cold-sweat tension—conjuring a hauntingly nihilistic vision of a world ruled by chance and fate.
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Supplements
- Friedkin Uncut (2018), a documentary by Francesco Zippel featuring interviews with Friedkin; screenwriter Walon Green; filmmakers Wes Anderson, Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino; and others
- New conversation between filmmaker James Gray and film critic Sean Fennessey
- Archival audio interviews with Walon Green and editor Bud Smith, from the collection of Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, author of William Friedkin (2003)
- Conversation from 2015 between William Friedkin and filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn
- Behind-the-scenes footage of Friedkin on set
- Trailer
- An essay by film critic Justin Chang