Friedkin was famously quoted as telling Henri-Georges Clouzot that he wanted to do a remake of his favorite film The Wages of Fear that would be inferior to the original. He suceeded. He didn’t make an awful film; there are many remarkable sequences. But this film lacks the sharp charactirizations (although it spends 45 minutes showing convoluted backstory unseesn in the French version) and white-knuckle suspense the setting deserves. Friedkin’s version, with its multimillion dollar budget, has flabbergasting photography and great montages. Plus, a neato Tangerine Dream score. I’m glad I saw this important, noble failure of 1970s cinema.