Film Review

The Wages of Fear (2024) — wearisome “remake” of a classic thriller

In order to prevent a deadly explosion, a crack team has 24 hours to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerin across a desert laden with danger.

Julien Leclercq’s The Wages of Fear / Le Salaire de la Peur makes a strong point in its opening credits of stating that it’s based on the 1953 film by Henri-Georges Clouzot, but only “freely adapted” from Georges Arnaud’s slightly earlier novel, Le Salaire de la Peur. In truth, however, it’s a very loose adaptation of the film too — borrowing some of the premise and a few scenes, but not developing them significantly. The result is a below-average action thriller where the supposed Clouzot connection will only irritate fans of the original.

The novel, the Clouzot film, and William Friedkin’s remake Sorcerer (1977) — the latter a flop that has since garnered a cult following — were all set in various parts of Latin America (Guatemala for the book, Colombia for Friedkin, unspecified for Clouzot). Leclercq, however, transposes the action to an unnamed Middle…