Finally saw this, had some issues with the plot
I put off watching this for a looong time. I guess I felt like maybe it wouldn't live up to the hype, because on paper it sounds like my cup of tea, but its obscurity -- given its pedigree -- wasn't exactly inspiring.
First off, I really liked it from the start. The first hour, showing why the characters ended up in their shared situation, was great. Friedkin at his best, like in the Iraqi segment of The Exorcist, can really capture the spirit of a place and set a uniquely uneasy atmosphere.
I like Scheider a lot -- just watched Jaws again last week -- and the other actors were also excellent. I dug both the score and cinematography.
So why didn't like Sorcerer *a lot*?
I felt like the writers threw motivation out the window in the second half. Maybe there are good explanations for these questions, but they really undermined the movie for me:
1. These guys all escaped to this little *beep* of a town because they were hiding for their lives. So why are they all suddenly willing to risk death to get out of it? Because it's a tough place to live, and they're being shaken down by corrupt cops? Where do they think they're going to go hide that will be better than this?
2. For some reason this big oil company keeps its nitroglycerine in an neglected, unsupervised, poorly maintained shack in the jungle 218 miles away from its drilling site, even though it's an important tool they may need have on hand in an emergency.
3. This big oil company calls in a helicopter and asks the pilot to transport unstable nitro that would be unsafe to handle, but never thinks to ask the helicopter pilot to bring with him some stable explosives that they can use right away. Was it more cost-effective to pay 40000 pesos (plus supplying two large trucks and apparently a bunch of additional new auto parts) and risk a 218-mile land journey than it would have been to just fly in some new explosives?
4. Not only are these 4 guys in the middle of nowhere great drivers, but apparently they are also skilled auto mechanics, including the effette French banker who pissed away his family fortune. Who would have guessed he would be such a convincing handyman?
5. On the journey, there are a few times when characters make complete 180-degree changes in attitude in a second for no reason. The guy from Jerusalem doesn't want to drive, but the French guy mumbles something, and then he does it without protesting any longer. The Mexican guy starts running away, but Jackie gets him to come back with no effort at persuasion -- even though this guy is clearly crazy and seems content to murder anyone inconvenient to him. These moments felt like the writers wanted to put more conflict in some scenes, but didn't want to think of actual conflicts or then trouble themselves with resolving the conflicts.
6. Not a plot problem, but I did not like Jackie's hallucination scene at all. It was the most poorly done, ineffective and surely the most (only?) dated part of the movie.
7. So apparently they only needed one crate of nitro, which means that both trucks were risking the explosion of two additional crates each. Why not minimize the risk by only each carrying one crate? Is there a logistic reason for this?
8. Through the movie people are carrying the crates with utmost care even though they can withstand almost 2 miles of drunken-like, delirious staggering.
9. What's the deal with dancing with the cleaning lady at the end? That didn't work for me. It felt like something out of a different movie, something cheesier and sentimental. I thought he was going to go over to those extortionist cops and punch one of them or something, but instead it went for a forced (and maybe condescending) "moment."