The Wages of Fear (A Netflix Remake?!)

The Wages of Fear (Le Salarie de la Peur) (2024)

Runtime: 104 excruciating minutes

Directed by: Julien Leclercq

Starring: A bunch of French people who are probably better off having me not mention them

From: Of course Netflix would release something this putrid

A movie so bad, I probably won’t renew my Netflix subscription! It expires tonight and given that their offerings still mostly aren’t for me, including how mediocre or worse most of their original films are…

To make an even more blasphemous statement, I’ll likely never see a version of this story I’ll love. The idea of transporting nitro across a barren landscape SHOULD cause me to swoon, but in the THREE movies before this, I’ve never loved the characters and/or the overall plot. This includes:

Sorcerer, where the leads are all A-holes I couldn’t give a damn about, even with a character I’ll always remember as “Bootleg Rutger Hauer.”

The original Wages of Fear, where the leads are all A-holes I couldn’t give a damn about and it takes almost an hour to literally get on the road.

The quite obscure 1958 Warner Brothers programmer Violent Road, which was an unauthorized remake starring Brian Keith. The OG Clouzot movie and Sorcerer were both fine due to some great suspenseful scenes while Violent Road is only OK overall.

That is why I did not react in horror when hearing about this French Netflix remake that debuted on Good Friday. Most people likely did not know there WAS a remake until recently; last year I read an article announcing this project.

This time, in an unnamed African country (filmed in Morocco) nitro is needed to prevent a huge explosion at a random village where some random French people live. Great optics, I know--regrettably, this also has rampant sexism and like in all the other versions of the story, A-holes I couldn’t give a damn about! What idiotic characters-not to mention cliches-they all were. Mix in nonsense involving this country’s military rule/random insurgents showing up, not to mention a surprising lack of suspense during the driving scenes.

Heck, this oddly had a lack of plot momentum even once the transportation began. As the CG didn’t look great, the action never rose above “OK” and there’s too much time spent not driving the shipment while they have their figurative hands on their Peters. I am sure those that do love the Clouzot original and Sorcerer will be righteously offended at how this turns out so they need to avoid as if the movie was nitroglycerine. 

Even worse, the movie gets stupider and stupider the further this film lurches to a pathetic ending. The fact that I groaned several times during the final act (including what was supposed to stir emotions in the audience), there is a huge factor in why I am giving this such a low grade. March as a whole had me not getting to some movies I said elsewhere I would—that will finally happen in April, along with more variety.