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Watched The Good The Bad The Weird last night: an entertaining and occasionally demented Korean Western, set in 1920s or 30s Manchuria. Captures the "triello" rivalry of the Leone original quite nicely, although "The Good" bounty hunter is a bit of a cipher - Tuco-styled Manchurian bandit "The Weird" (the slovenly wastrel from Korean Godzilla homage The Host) is the most engaging character of the three, although "The Bad's" impeccably-tailored narcissism was a consistent source of amusement. Nice Morricone tribute on the end title music, too. Not exactly deep, but a lot of fun.

Somewhat less successful is William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977), an ill-conceived remake of Clouzot's The Wages of Fear. Friedkin has been promising a Director's Cut DVD of this for donkey's years, which would presumably incorporate some of the alternate footage found in the UK edit (retitled The Wages of Fear), but as my patience has strictly finite boundaries I finally threw in the towel and ordered Universal's cheap (and cheap-looking) region 1 disc last week. At exactly 2 hours it's shorter than the original, but somehow feels a good half-hour longer, thanks to a meandering pace and a seeming lack of understanding of what made the Clouzot version work so well in the first place. A very long, globe-spanning preamble (obviously included to "open up" the oppressive atmosphere of the original with some international location shooting and a bit of action) only serves to diminish the claustrophobic power of the story, and seems oddly pointless. Much like the film itself. Gone is the sense of grim camaraderie shared by the original's hell drivers: everyone here hates everyone else's guts. No confidences are shared, no dreams glimpsed. There's just mud, rain, hatred and despair. Nominal star Roy Scheider hardly registers at all, lost amongst his glum co-performers like a supporting player in his own movie. I've no idea why the film is called Sorcerer, beyond noting that the name is stenciled on the side of one of the battered trucks crawling its way through the Venezuelan jungle. Tangerine Dream's electronic score is great, though only utilized by Friedkin in tiny snatches: another frustrating artistic choice. One of the most confused remakes you'll ever see, though at least it's never actually boring.