A reeking bandana movie, with all the expected thrills, but a vision of men as scurrying insects with no redeeming features.
Comment
01/26/06
The Wages of Fear (1952)
100
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:35
Fresh:35
Rotten:0
Average Rating:8.8/10
Consensus: An existential suspense classic, The Wages of Fear blends nonstop suspense with biting satire; its influence is still being felt on today's thrillers.
Runtime: 2 hrs 28 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Henri Georges Clouzot directed this tense and suspenseful drama about four men so desperate for freedom that they willingly risk their lives to deliver a dangerous cargo. In a small, isolated, hot... [More]
Starring: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Vera Clouzot, Peter Van Eyck
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Reviews for The Wages of Fear
Top CriticAn extraordinarily gripping thriller from Henri-Georges Clouzot that establishes and maintains a level of tension rarely equalled elsewhere in cinema.
04/24/09
Top CriticA nail-biting drama that's a must-see.
03/01/07
Top CriticA certified classic with one of the most famous plots in film history.
02/13/01
Top CriticExcellent, but nasty stuff.
07/30/03
Top CriticA harrowing odyssey of four derelicts inching two trucks loaded with nitro-glycerine over a tortuous terrain puts this in the strong meat department with a downbeat theme of fear and its manifestations.
03/01/07
Top CriticNo review available.
06/03/04
The excitement derives entirely from the awareness of nitroglycerine and the gingerly, breathless handling of it. You sit there waiting for the theatre to explode.
05/20/03
Top CriticNo review available.
08/22/03
The Wages of Fear is a frantic, vicious, existentialist howl that still manages to laugh; it goes grinning into the void.
10/17/05
No review available.
10/06/05
One of the most suspenseful films ever made.
07/25/02
A perfect blend of suspense and social satire.
12/12/06
"Wages of Fear" is an uncompromising parable about money, greed, and man's jealous desire for that which he can never have. Yves Montand is outstanding in this gritty and unrelentingly suspenseful picture.
04/13/09
No review available.
05/14/04
One of the best existential thrillers ever made, Clouzot's 1952 film, which won the Cannes Fest Palme d'Or, is just as fresh, suspenseful, gritty and haunting today as it was decades ago; good companion piece to Clouzot's Diabolique.
04/06/07
Now seems much less like Salt of the Earth-as-a-potboiler and a lot more like the spiritual godfather to every testosterone-fuelled thrill ride since.
04/20/09
When contrabandists become businessmen and human life is blown away as simply as the tobacco in a half-rolled cigarillo, heroism and grace are notions that wither in the heat
09/25/09
No review available.
06/26/04
The kind of motion picture for which commonplace phrases like 'white-knuckle tension ride' have been coined.
01/01/00
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