Took way too long to get going? *spoilers*

Perhaps you should add (spoiler alert) to your thread title. It didn't ruin it for me, but there's a chance it might for people who haven't seen it...

If you thought this took way too long to get going, you'd hate the original.

If you're a big fan of a film, like I am of Sorcerer, even 4 hours wouldn't have been too long. I also love every moment of Apocalypse Now Redux and the director's cut of Das Boot. If the film has a good hook and is expertly directed and acted, my patience is long indeed.

However, I can understand why non-devotees would find the intro unnecessarily long. Me, I think the beginning does this film an immense service. Rather than introducing us to 4 random guys with no back story, forcing us to ask why they're in such a dilapidated toilet bowl in the first place, we instead get a strong sense that they had purposeful lives (even if lives of crime) that their current situation must make them miss all the more. Even running from the IDF would seem like a day on the beach compared to trucking around highly unstable nitroglycerin.

I disagree. The movie is 2 hours long, and the trip begins, 1 hour in.

That first hour is the setup. We learn who the characters are, their history, their motivations, their good and bad traits.

The actual story of moving the trucks is not that important.... The thing important is that these men who we 'know' by now are on a mission that might kill them. The audience feels what is at stake. Without that setup, the audience would not be emotionally invested.