by Jeffery Rahming, Contributing Writer
Hollywood’s incessant need to remake everything strikes again: The victim this time is Wages of Fear, a 1953 French classic highly regarded for its influence on the entire thriller genre. It’s an emotional story of four men on a dangerous journey that explores themes of morality and desperation. This Netflix adaptation is… not that. In fact, I’ve never seen a remake that feels like the complete antithesis of what it’s based on. Far from the slow but steady pace of the original, in the first 15 minutes, we’re already thrown into three action set peices and a sex scene with very little context. The context that’s revealed as the plot unravels does not make the experience any better, but it points to a larger problem. This movie feels like a collection of explosions and shootout scenes that struggle for a reason to exist.
In The Wages of Fear, a team of mercenaries takes the risky job of transporting explosive nitroglycerin to put out an oil fire that’s set to explode and consume an entire village. The crew assembled can best be described as Fast & Furious characters without the benefit of being played by actors you like. Along the way, they’re challenged by rocky terrain, local warlords, and landmines, but all of that doesn’t matter when the characters you’re supposed to be concerned for are so flat. We don’t get a lot of depth from any of these mercenaries, whereas in the original, the deep fears and desires of the team are the whole point.
Like most Netflix originals, this is an expensive production with solid craft behind it. The actors are trying their best to bring their underwritten personas to life, the cinematography looks pretty good (if you ignore the blue-orange color filter that seems to be the palette of 90% of streaming movies), and the action scenes are serviceable, but at the end of the day, it just feels soulless. It’s just another example of Hollywood’s unfortunate trend of reviving a unique story only to boil it down to a formulaic slog. I can’t imagine someone watching a black-and-white French film and thinking that what it really needed was more guns. This was made not out of any love or respect for the source material, but as a cheap attempt to use its legacy to boost up a rather below-average action flick.
Despite the technical prowess, this movie is ultimately empty. It’s not offensively bad, but by the end, you can’t help but feel like it wasted precious time. That being said, I would recommend you watch Wages of Fear. It was made in 1953 and makes the film I just reviewed less than unnecessary.
Rating: Didn’t Like It
The Wages of Fear is currently streaming on Netflix
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