Four strangers, in their own vignettes, end up fleeing to South America. Broke, desperate and hating this accursed place, they fester and scrape by. The town's only source of income is the oil industry, and one of their wells has blown and needs to be capped. Unfortunately the only dynamite has been improperly stored and is leaking nitroglycerine: the slightest bump will set it off. And this dynamite has to be transported across 200 miles of jungle, in two rickety trucks. With no other options and a way out of this mess, the four strangers get their way onto the trucks, two men to each, and begin this perilous journey.
A movie about four dudes driving through the jungle. Riveting stuff.
But genuinely this movie is a masterclass in tension. You know that one or both of these trucks are going to explode, since you have basic story telling instincts, so question becomes one of "when". You get attached to these four men, both from their vignettes at the start and their interactions with each other before and during the mission, you want each of them to survive.
Well, Kassem is the least interesting or developed of the four, and I'm including Nilo the mysterious hitman who we learn next to nothing about and is awesome, but that's a minor quibble.
It's a gritty, grimy, nasty journey through the woods, where simple things like trees and a muddy bank become the most deadly enemies known to man; and the soundtrack is an ear-melting score by Tangerine Dream, especially effective in ramping up the madness and delirium towards the end when it becomes psychedelic and a descent into true exhaustion and insanity. Plus there's a cameo by Joe Spinnell!
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