Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Wages of Fear’ on Netflix, a Remake of the 1953 French Action Classic

Last week’s remake of a classic movie featuring bareknuckle fighting was Amazon Prime Video’s Road House, and this week’s is Netflix’s The Wages of Fear. One more of these, and you’ve got yerself a TREND! (Note: That’s not an invitation to remake Fight Club, thank you.) Director Julien Leclercq’s Wages is a modern reiteration of the 1953 film of the same name, in which an intrepid team of hard-luck dudes have to drive two trucks full of nitroglycerin across a treacherous landscape. The new film stars Franck Gastambide and Alban Lenoir as contentious brothers tasked with the dangerous endeavor; will they survive all the obstacles a plot can throw at them, or end up getting blowed up real good? We’re all on pins and needles here folks, pins and needles.

THE WAGES OF FEAR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: What country is this? I don’t know. Nobody ever mentions it. But it’s maybe one of the -stans or someplace in the middle east, a wartorn place where Clara (Ana Girardot) has to avoid the machine-gunfire of bandits in order to transport medicine across the desert to a village full of poor helpless villagers. Her partner in this endeavor is Fred (Gastambide), who I think is a mercenary of some sort. He knows what to do with a gun, at least, and I totally mean that as a double-entendre – dodging bullets and getting a trunkful of vaccines to sick people apparently gets them really horny because they’re barely out of the car before they find a quiet spot to release some of each other’s juices. How’d Fred end up here? It’s squishy and vague, but 9 MONTHS EARLIER, in a flashback that lasts too long but at least gives the movie another action sequence, he talked his brother Alex (Lenoir), an explosives expert, into trying to heist a safe full of cash from a total jerk. Alex got pinched and Fred didn’t, and now Fred feels like shit because Alex is in a hellhole prison and can’t be with his wife and sweet adorable daughter. Life is pain.

Back to the desert. At the tail end of Clara and Fred’s last vaccine run, a stray bullet hit the neighborhood oil derrick, and before you know it, WHOOMP, it’s spitting a constant 30-foot tower of flames. This is less than ideal. Pressure’s rising in the system and if something isn’t done about it soon, the entire village will be toast. The solution to this seems counterintuitive, but I guess it works: Blow up the derrick. The explosion will extinguish the flame and save the innocent villagers. Now, if the oil company only had 100 pounds of nitroglycerin, their problems would be solved. But they don’t have 100 pounds of nitroglycerin, and the only place to get 100 pounds of nitroglycerin is 500 miles away. That means loading 100 pounds of nitroglycerin into a truck and driving it through ludicrous terrain in hostile enemy territory, and considering 100 pounds of nitroglycerin is more sensitive than the most inflamed inner-thigh rash and a million times as explosive, this is a Dirty Job That Someone’s Gotta Do.

Cue Fred. Not only will he get a million bucks for this gig, he’ll get Alex sprung from prison, because Alex is an explosives expert who knows how to properly handle 100 pounds of nitroglycerin, which is, very very gently. Cut to the hellhole prison, where we get an overlong sequence that’s not entirely necessary, but hey, at least we get an entertaining and incredibly violent scene in which Alex proves to be the prison’s most brutal-ass bareknuckle fighter. When the bros finally get on the road, they’re accompanied by Clara, a jackass named Gauthier (Sofiane Zermani) and a variety of sub-characters who seem like the Star Trek redshirts of this group.

There’s actually 200 pounds of nitroglycerin they’re going to haul back, because I guess a backup load of 100 pounds of nitroglycerin is necessary in case the first 100 pounds of nitroglycerin explodes on the way, or ends up being a dud load of 100 pounds of nitroglycerine. So they load up two trucks with 100 pounds of nitroglycerin each, and they do it very very very very very very very very carefully – advice: don’t trip, don’t sneeze, don’t blink, don’t fart and don’t let a fly tickle your nose while you’re handling it – and it’s time to start the timer: 24 hours to cross the desert and deal with hostile checkpoints, snipers, landmines, oil spills, a mama duck and her baby ducks crossing the road and possibly (no spoilers!) a dust devil full of rabid spinning weasels before the villagers all die miserable horrible fiery deaths. No pressure!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Haven’t seen a guy so delicately handle explosives in a desert since The Hurt Locker. And I haven’t seen such tense vehicle chases across a desert since Fury Road. (Note of clarification: this is no Hurt Locker or Fury Road.)

Performance Worth Watching: Is that a relatively complex emotion I see on Girardot’s face maybe two or three times during the movie? Yep. She’s pretty good at it, and stands out among the angry faces and stoic faces and oh-shit-we’re-in-peril faces that are a dime a dozen here. 

Memorable Dialogue: Alex tries to why-me himself out of the job:

Alex: Given where the nitro is, couldn’t you find a decent driver?

Oil company a-hole: They all refused.

Alex: You’ll understand if I refuse too. 

Sex and Skin: A short instance of toplessness and chest-up nookie.

Our Take: The Wages of Fear has more NITROGLYCERIN HIJINKS per square inch than any other movie you’ve seen in the past decade. Predictably, we get shots from inside the cargo hold of the crates of nitro jostling and clinking and somehow not being hit with bullets, and we’re supposed to be gritting our teeth the entire time. Leclercq ably creates a sense of tension, but I wasn’t really sweating it; it’s like watching the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he tests warheads for duds by hitting them with a hammer, and we know even if one blows, one or some or all of the principals will survive it somehow. 

I haven’t seen the original film, but I’d be shocked if it was better than Leclercq’s. This Wages is a passable-enough timewaster filled with 2-D characters, a few relatively enjoyable action set pieces and an emotional arc that never gets much traction. And as the movie’s lead, Gastambide gives off big Vin Diesel Energy – read: emoting is entirely optional and when things explode Fred doesn’t even flinch – which means the emphasis here is on generating excitement with motion and danger and violence, not the performances. The film is ably, and sometimes quite skillfully, directed, but there’s nothing to set it apart from the variety of generic action-thrillers populating Netflix’s content menus. The original is on Max, so maybe that’s a more viable use of your time.

Our Call: All that said, this remake of The Wages of Fear is good enough as a professional filmmaking endeavor to warrant a marginal recommendation, faint praise be damned. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.