Sorcerer

At more than two hours, Sorcerer is, for the most part, a palpably overlong drama that’s rife with superfluous scenes and subplots – with the movie’s saving grace a handful of absolutely enthralling action-oriented sequences. The narrative follows four outcasts as they agree to transport crates of unstable dynamite through the jungles of South America, with the characters’ continuing efforts complicated and stymied by a variety of obstacles and problems. Sorcerer takes a fantastic premise and dilutes it with a bloated running time that’s focused on elements of a decidedly uninteresting, uninvolving nature, as filmmaker William Friedkin, working from a script by Walon Green, offers up an opening hour that’s devoted almost entirely to the backstories of the four central characters. This is certainly a good idea in theory, and yet Friedkin, for the most part, finds himself unable to wholeheartedly transform any of these people into the fascinating figures he clearly wants them to be. This proves especially true for French businessman Victor Manzon (Bruno Cremer), as Cremer’s bland performance ensures that every moment his character is onscreen is a test to the viewer’s ongoing patience. And although the film flounders once the four men arrive at their destination (ie Friedkin devotes far too much time to the guys’ initial exploits in the low-rent city), Sorcerer improves immeasurably once the protagonists embark on their respective journeys through an increasingly perilous landscape. The film’s highlight, for example, is undoubtedly a now-legendary sequence in which Roy Scheider’s Jackie Scanlon attempts to cross a rickety rope bridge, with the palpable tension of this scene heightened by Friedkin’s expert direction and Scheider’s absolutely enthralling performance. Likewise, the latter half of the movie boasts a handful of other impressively suspenseful moments, including an encounter with cavalier, dangerous guerillas, and the movie builds to a satisfyingly dark finale. It’s just too bad, then, that Sorcerer isn’t able to maintain that level of tension for the duration of its 121 minute running time, and it’s ultimately clear that the film could’ve benefited from a few more passes through the editing bay.

**1/2 out of ****