Movie Review: The Wages of Fear

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 The Wages of Fear is a master class in suspense, using a simple premise to keep viewers on the edge of their seats for much of its runtime. With it being somewhat lesser known today, it actually makes a degree of sense as a property to remake. It is a shame then that Julien Leclerq’s attempt to do so is such a waste of time. Where the original sees a quartet of hired drivers tasked with transporting nitroglycerine over 300 miles of treacherous terrain in order to extinguish a burning oil field, this version decides that isn’t enough to maintain audience interest and adds in unnecessary back stories and some terrorists, because why not?

Brothers Fred (Franck Gastambide) and Alex (Alban Lenoir) were once close but became separated after Fred let Alex take the fall for an attempted robbery. After an attack, an oil well near a small village catches fire and can only be put out with nitroglycerine stored at a remote solar power plant (is that normally where one would keep that?). The company that owns the well immediately begins to make arrangements to move the volatile material to avoid any bad press, and so tries to hire Fred for some reason, offering to get his brother out of jail to help. He accepts and after an unsurprisingly tense reunion, the duo are joined by the company’s private security team and (for incredibly flimsy reasons) a pair of local aid workers that includes Fred’s romantic interest.

What follows is a series of often baffling decisions made by contemptible characters interspersed with periodic attacks by generic Middle Eastern terrorists. The cast does alright with their material, but no one is asked to do much apart from the brothers, and even their roles aren’t especially demanding. Lenoir is basically asked to be quietly angry the whole time and Gastambide was seemingly told to act like Vin Diesel doing an imitation of the “blue steel” pose from Zoolander. Everyone else needs only behave like a jerk, an idiot, or a combination of the two, completely removing any empathy one might feel for them as they are gradually picked off along the journey.

This version of The Wages of Fear somehow manages to strip all the suspense out of a very solid premise and leaves the viewer with so little to care about they might find themselves rooting for the nitroglycerine. Back in the Blockbuster Video era these sorts of cheap actioners could at least be counted on for a good time, and while this movie does achieve a similar look and feel to those it lacks any of the fun. You’d be much better served to seek out the original instead. ★