William Friedkin · 1977 · thriller

William Friedkin's 1977 reworking of The Wages of Fear. Four fugitives, each fleeing a ruined life on a different continent, are stranded in a remote Latin American oil town and take on an all-but-impossible job: hauling two truckloads of unstable, nitroglycerine-sweating dynamite over 200 miles of mountain and jungle to cap a burning well. The country is never named and the film was shot in the Dominican Republic; this route places the journey in the Colombian jungle, running inland from the coast to the oil fields.

1. 1
   New Jersey

   Jackie Scanlon, a small-time mob driver, flees the country after a heist turns deadly, while three other desperate men flee Veracruz, Jerusalem and Paris.

2. 2
   Porvenir

   All four wash up in Porvenir, a wretched oil-company village walled in by jungle, with no money to leave.

3. 3
   The Bridge

   When a distant well catches fire, they take suicidal work: driving rotting dynamite over 200 miles of jungle road, across a rope bridge swaying in a storm.

4. 4
   The Oil Well

   One truck, and one man, barely reach the well, only for fate to collect its due.