El salario del miedo

I tried it because it is made by a director - Julien Leclercq - whom I have always followed and mostly liked the films and series - BRAQUEURS. But here, sorry, I could not make it. It is lousy, nearly laughable, a total waste of time. Julien Leclercq's worst film, so far. Where is the GIBRALTAR director? He seems to have lost all ambition. Actually this story lacks tragedy, it would have been gloomier, I would have liked it, because not every director is Clouzot or Friedkin...I can understand this. And from the first day I was informed of this "explosive" project, I was afraid. I felt like a beast inside of me growing up, spreading in all my body. A SALAIRE DE LA PEUR remake with Alban Lenoir!!! Oh My God !!!! And my terror was unfortunately plenty justified and confirmed. Run away from it. It is more dangerous for your movie loving tendancies than any nitroglycerin truck. But if you want an advice to appreciate this one, at least TRY to appreciate, please forget the two previous films: LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR - the genuine one, starring Yves Montand and Charles Vanel, and THE SORCERER, starring Bruno Cremer and Roy Scheider. Then, and only then, maybe you'll may bear this one. But I must admit it is not boring. AT LEAST.

Do you remember that Demi Moore film version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER where they added sex, violence, and a happy ending? If you do remember that, this movie is pretty much the same thing. It's a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic 1954 film about four desperate men transporting highly volatile nitroglycerine over rocky terrain to extinguish a South American oil drill fire. That film was intelligent, well-crafted, and featured some of the most suspenseful scenes in film history. This remake takes that masterpiece, dispenses with any subtext, and pours on muscular action in the vein of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS franchise. As dumb as that sounds, it's entertaining enough. Also, I'll admit to having a soft spot for the ridiculous Demi Moore Hawthorn films (it may have my favorite John Barry score), but if you want an actually good remake of the Clouzot film, check out William Friedkin's 1977 version, THE SORCERER, which manages to equal Clouzot's original in both intelligence and nail-biting suspense.

For almost anyone who studied french in high school in Quebec in the 80s one of the standard books was "La Dynamite" about driving a truck with unstable nitroglycerine across treacherous terrain and bumpy roads.

This is basically that but with guns and over acting.

Now Georges Arnaud wrote "Le Salaire de la peur" in 1950 so it's more likely that our "La Dynamite" was a copy of that, but it was amusing.

Beyond that, it's not a great film, mediocre at best, but it is mindless late night viewing. Maybe it was because the story was so familiar in general but everything about this movie was overly predictable.

Yes, you read that right....just seven minutes into this movie and it was apparanetly clear how badly directed, written, edited and acted.

Editing First clue to a bad movie is when a very simple scene have multiple edits in just three seconds of scene. GUILTY. A chase scene was edited so badly that you did not know who were the good guys or bad guys.

Direction: The villain is only five seconds behind me, I ran off the road, get stuck, get pushed out and now the villain is about 30 seconds behind me. Stupid...just stupid. Oh, the the villain is steadily firing a machine gun and not hitting anything once.

Writing/Acting: I am about to lose my life and I rattle off a statement with the same emotion of ordering a soy latte.

Skip this movie.

When I first started watching the movie with the English dubbed version, I didn't enjoy it because the voices and sound effects seemed slow and unimpressive. I then tried watching it with the original soundtrack, but it didn't get any better. The action scenes, which should have been thrilling, were just not exciting at all, mostly because they were too focused on showing violence without a good pace. The sound editing was also not great, making the movie feel dull and uninteresting. It seemed like the filmmakers were more interested in filming some nice scenes in the rocky terrain than in developing a gripping story. I couldn't feel any empathy for the main characters when they were in danger or got hurt because the movie didn't make me care about them. In the end, it was really boring and not worth watching.