Interpreting Sorcerer

Jackie Scanlon's fate is prefigured/foreshadowed in the car crash scene near the beginning of the movie. In that scene he crawls away from a pillar of water. Near the end of the movie, in an almost identically composed shot, he is crawling toward a pillar of fire.

The pillar of water represents holiness: water is holy. It is his salvation. But he rejects salvation by crawling away from it.

In fact he is already dead, killed in the car crash. But he refuses to accept his death and the salvation he crawls away from.

At the crash site a crazy homeless man leans down to him and tells him he must run away because the police are coming. So he runs ...

So he goes to Purgatory. The hellish Central American country to which he flees is not hell but it is the closest thing to it: it is Purgatory and Jackie has been consigned to it for his sins. He is dead but he does not know it. And he cannot pass on until he has atoned for his sins.

The other three members of the truck-driving crew--Serrano (the French banker, Kassem (the Palestinian terrorist), and Nilo (the assassin)--are also dead. They may not be dead in the bodily sense, but their souls are dead. They are all in Purgatory where they must atone for their sins.

Jackie finally does atone for his sins by transporting the crate of nitro to the burning oil rig. They all do. They complete their task and do so rather courageously. And in completing their task they stand by and with each other: they work together and they all recover their lost humanity.

So, Jackie has atoned for his sins. He staggers toward a pillar of fire, which is also a symbol of holiness: it recalls the pillar of fire in the Book of Exodus set by God to guide the Hebrews to the Red Sea. Fire is also a cleansing agent and he must pass through the fire to be released from Purgatory.

And he reaches the fire, completing his mission, completing his life. He is to be released from Purgatory and allowed to pass on. But because he still does not realize he is dead, his passing cannot happen without outside agency: which is provided by the mafia killers.

Jackie's murder at the end of the movie should be interpreted as a positive development. His tortured soul is released and allowed to pass on.