Sorcerer (🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟) might be one of the best films I’ve ever seen in my life. I lost track of how many times I said “holy shit” while watching this movie. How am I expected to just go on with my day after watching this film? I need a moment. William Friedkin, you crazy bastard, I love you & I miss you. The world misses you. I personally apologize for waiting so long to watch this film but I bow before your feet & humbly thank you for this piece of art that rises to the level of masterpiece. What an unbelievable film. Sorcerer tells the story of four men clinging to life. More specifically, four strangers from different corners of the world who find themselves completely out of options. A crooked banker. A mobster. A hitman. A terrorist. Four men who’ve never met, never interacted, never crossed baths but who have all find themselves outcast to a random village in Central America after being disgraced in each of their lines of work. How do these four criminals eventually meet? An oil explosion occurs near the village they now live in within Central America. The only way to put out the ongoing fire is to transport gallons of nitroglycerin across the jungle by two ancient trucks, called Sorcerer. These four men volunteer to drive the nitroglycerin across the jungle for enough money to each gain their lives back. The way this story is told is brilliant. The first third of the film feels like a novella- almost like four separate short stories of four men in different parts of the world whose lives are falling apart. But halfway through the film, right after the oil explosion when the leaders of the village go on the intercom and call for four brave men to drive into the fire, and when Friedkin slowly zooms in on each of our four protagonists (the banker, the mobster, the hitman, the terrorist), everything in this film starts to change. You cannot exhale the last half of this film. After our four protagonists unite and after they begin their mission into the jungle, there is no going back. You become William Friedkin’s prisoner. He owns you. At no point did I ever really know where this story was going or what would happen to the four protagonists in this film. “Unpredictable” doesn’t do this film justice. But it’s not just the fact that this story is so utterly unpredictable, it’s the filmmaking that Friedkin uses that brings you as a member of the audience into the “do or die” peril that these characters face. On at least 5 occasions, I literally had to pause the film and marvel in awe at the shots Friedkin captured. For example, a shot under a bridge, covered in pouring rain, capturing a Sorcerer driving on wood panels. How? Who? What? Sorcerer released in 1977, at a time when studios were still pouring all of their money into the actual film itself- not just marketing and selling the film. You see that everywhere in this movie. There’s no way on Earth a studio would let a filmmaker take the risks Friedkin takes in this film in today’s Hollywood. Everything on location. All effects practical. We are unlikely to ever a get film like this again- a film that literally takes you to the edge of a cliff and keeps you dangling for 2 hours. It’s because artists like Friedkin- visionaries- were given some sort of creative freedom to actually express themselves. And speaking of Friedkin, between The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live & Die in L.A. and Sorcerer, I put Friedkin’s four best films up against any director’s four films in the history of cinema. The last 30 minutes of this movie is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Roy Scheider literally cuts open his heart and soul and smears it all over the screen. The colors. The editing. The sound. Not only that, so much plot takes place in the last 30 minutes of this movie. So much happens. I think that’s part of the reason I can’t stop thinking about Sorcerer. I watched this movie on Sunday. It’s now Wednesday. And yet this is still all I can think about. The last act is a big reason why. This is one of those films I don’t feel worthy reviewing. Sorcerer is a masterpiece.