It begins with several loose ends: we meet a Palestinian terrorist (Amidou), a failed French banker (Bruno Cremer), a hit man (Francisco Rabal) and an American bank robber (Roy Scheider). It turns out that these four strangers have much in common: they are criminals with their lives in danger, and must flee somewhere where they cannot be found: an obscure mining town in rural Nicaragua.
An act of sabotage at an oil refinery causes a massive fire, which can only be extinguished with dynamite. The only available dynamite is 200 miles. Volunteers are needed for the near-suicidal, but high-paying job of transferring the dynamite by truck to the fire. The four criminals, desperate for cash, volunteer for the job.
Since "Sorcerer" is an American film, Scheider has the biggest role. He hardly gets to smile the entire film, and spends most of it struggling to get the dynamite-laden truck across rickety bridges and nearly-impassable roads. Character development is marginal, and we don't see these men beyond desperate outlaws. Cremer is the exception, as we get glimpses of his married and business life before having to flee France.
How others will see it. Director Friedkin's The Exorcist had been a surprise spectacular hit in 1973. Audiences thus probably anticipated that Sorcerer would be a horror movie, instead of a tense thriller starring antiheroes in a foreign jungle.
Sorcerer also had the bad luck to open while Star Wars (1977) was dominating theaters. Sorcerer was also burdened with a misleading title, as there are no wizards in the movie, nor is it set in Medieval times.
Eventually, the film was reappraised, and now attains a high user rating of 7.7 out of 10 at imdb.com. The 35K user vote total is nonetheless fairly low, given that Jaws (1975), also starring Roy Scheider, has 728K user votes.
Sorcerer only secured a single Oscar nomination, in the minor category of Best Sound. It is, however, a favorite film of acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino.
Evidence of Sorcerer's significance is best seen in its imdb user reviews, which particularly head praise on the notorious bridge scenes. Both dynamite-laden trucks manage to crawl over the swaying, rickety bridge, though only with the utmost efforts of our antiheroes.
How I felt about it. William Friedkin achieved blockbuster success with two prior films, The French Connection and "The Exorcist. What they have in common with Sorcerer is that all all three films favor action, cinematography and story over character development and dialogue. Since all three are good films, Friedkin may have been onto something.
We know that, in real life, neither truck has even a remote chance of crossing that bridge. The trucks would either tumble off the bridge, which leans precariously back and forth, or fall through the bridge, which is in disrepair and unlikely built for the passage of a large, heavy truck.
Never mind. The scenes are great cinema nonetheless, filled with dramatic tension. We can identify with the suffering and determination of the protagonists, even if we don't agree with the crimes that compelled them to risk their lives for cash.