The Wages of Fear is a frantic, vicious, existentialist howl that still manages to laugh; it goes grinning into the void.
Comment
10/17/05
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
Get This Movie
Rent DVD
Click on the "ADD" button to put this movie into your Netflix queue.
Buy DVD
Reviews for The Wages of Fear
The kind of motion picture for which commonplace phrases like 'white-knuckle tension ride' have been coined.
01/01/00
Top CriticA classic suspense film...also the screen equivalent of a classic existentialist drama...The chemical reaction Clouzot gets from these genres is pure dynamite. [Blu-ray]
04/19/09
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
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 CriticThe film's extended suspense sequences deserve a place among the great stretches of cinema.
01/01/00
Top CriticA brilliant, though frankly overlong, exercise in filmmaking that creates a stunning portrait of a miserable corner of the world.
11/05/02
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
An expertly directed, personally felt film.
01/01/00
Top Critic[An] existential suspense classic.
10/29/05
A film that works, and works well enough to get audible gasps from the audience.
01/01/00
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
One of the all-time great truck movies.
01/01/00
Clouzot's camera captures the suspense as visually as Hitchcock
09/09/05
A nail-biting drama that's a must-see.
03/01/07
A terrific portrait of the class struggle that happens to have a few cases of nitro strapped to it to up the ante from the metaphorical to the extremely physical.
11/07/02
A significant influence on Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, this grueling pile driver of a movie will keep you on the edge of your seat.
03/01/07
Top Critic"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
A 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 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 CriticWhat’s Hot On RT
Fresh Links
Featured
History of Disney Animation 
MSN Movies offers a little background on the success of Disney Animation.
90 Years of Screen Vampires
TIME takes a look back at the history of vampires on film.
Virtuoso Vistas of Lovely Bones
Techland examines the visual splendor of Peter Jackson's upcoming film.
Recent Headlines as TV Movies
AOL put together a list of 10 recent news items that would be perfect as TV Movies.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter
Get the latest Tomatometer updates on upcoming movies!
IGN RSS Feeds