I'm enjoying this thread, but I'm not sure I'm down with this sort of "quantifying" of character.
When I watch Sorcerer, I'm not moralizing about the decisions the characters make; yes, each of the four is "compromised" to say the least, but they're also human beings, and like all human beings, they make decisions on the basis of values and pressures in their lives. Their values aren't ours, and neither are their pressures, so assessing their worth as people on the basis of the limited view the film affords, well, I don't know.
I guess what I'm saying is we're not really privy to each person's background, but the film renders them in such a fascinating way that you can feel that there is a background, that the characters have each traveled a long road to get to the point that drives them into the jungle -- upbringing, environment, rationalization, the burden of responsibility (to a cause, to a family, to oneself) -- and we're only shown the last act of their "respectable" existences. I figure that, for each of them (aside from Nilo, perhaps) it's the worst day of their lives.
It's not that I want to trivialize murder, whether based on commercial interests (Nilo) or political ones (Kassem), but moral relativism is a slippery slope. And when I watch Sorcerer, what it drives home for me is the fact that we're all one moment away from annihilation or, perhaps worse, the feeling that we're irredeemable. If we're lucky, we get the first without the second; if we're luckier still, it will be our own decisions that lead us there, rather than (as you say) the "cruel sorcerer" of fate.
Maybe I'm some sort of closet sociopath, but I don't tend to feel superiority towards characters like these. They're desperate men, and that's the one quality they truly share -- desperation. I've known a bit of that (as I guess we all have) and it's a humbling experience because it reminds you how close you are to running off into the Parisian afternoon with the clothes on your back, like Manzon, who five minutes earlier was in discussion with his wife about the conditions that enhance the deliciousness of a lobster.
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