– No Spoilers –

Trying to stop a deadly gas leak from turning a village into an inferno, a group of highly skilled people are tasked to bring two trucks full of nitroglycerine back in 24 hours through war-infested regions and prevent a terrible and impending catastrophe.

French action film The Wages of Fear jumps right from brotherly love (or, hatred) to a thrilling heist without skipping a beat. The storyline is simple – transporting stuff from one dangerous place to another. But the movie gives character introductions and interpersonal relationships right in between people shooting guns at each other so the drama is heightened and made a bit more emotional every step of the way.

There’s not a lot of mystery since the story is pretty straightforward, which is probably a good thing for movies of the genre because complicating itself too much just makes the runtime sluggish. The protagonists are two equally annoyed brothers, Fred and Alex, whose emotions range from stoic to stoic. Both Franck Gastambide and Alban Lenoir, whom we have seen many times in different action movies, look nothing like brothers but at least their mannerisms are similar. Their relationship with each other is defined before the action even starts so we are pretty aware of what to expect going forward.

Although their relationship goes from hatred to love pretty quickly, at least there is some depth to them than just “angry young men”. Gauthier plays the token “jerk” character that we often see in these movies and plays the role well – you would really love to hate him through and through. And then there is Clara – she is the token romantic interest but was at least written with some brains so there’s that.

The storyline drags a lot at some points because the movie isn’t able to balance its situations well. Some of it takes too long while the trajectory of the story goes down expected and convenient routes making it boring and unexciting. However, it’s better than AKA or Restless but that comparison is probably not for the best. However, for those who want maybe a simple action flick without any heavy bloodshed to watch with the family, this one makes sense. But for lovers of high-octane action movies with something happening every minute, this one is extremely mellow.

In that context as well, the grave situation and the threat of a few hundred people dying doesn’t seem to weigh on the characters or the situation much for some reason. We don’t find ourselves sitting on the edge of our seats, wondering whether or not the action heroes will be able to save the villagers because we know what’s about to happen. It doesn’t help that there is no twist either and the fact that the movie almost foreshadows everything minutes in advance just makes it even more annoying and anti-climactic.

The Wages of Fear Review: Final Thoughts

In spite of the protagonist brothers having a good backstory and the current issue at hand is one that has to be created within a certain time, The Wages of Fear feels slow and unfinished. You don’t connect with the characters much and things just happen at the usual pace without straying from the cliches that it is based on. I don’t understand what’s up with these French action movies which constantly come up with similar sequences based in a different location but at this point, I feel like the genre needs to reinvent itself or at least give us a graver situation to look forward to.

The Wages of Fear is streaming on Netflix.

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