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Netflix just remade one of the best thrillers of all time. Is it worth watching?

It might come as a surprise that there’s a new version of The Wages of Fear streaming on Netflix right now. With the caution of a driver carting explosives across a stretch of bumpy road, this French remake of a French classic sputtered onto the platform. Promotion has been minimal, and you have to go looking for the movie to find it on the homepage, where it sits several thumbnails deep on the “New Releases” carousel. As of this writing, there are no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes … mostly because Netflix didn’t make the film available in advance. If a truck explodes in the desert and there’s no one around to stream that explosion to their device, does it make a sound?

Frankly, a silent release is probably the right move for this particular international acquisition. Not since the much-maligned Netflix remake of Rebecca — a novel previously adapted by Alfred Hitchcock — has a milestone of suspense been so ruinously upgraded for the 21st century. Directed and co-written by Julien Leclercq, the new Wages transports its tense scenario from the midcentury South America of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 original to a more contemporary and arid backdrop. The most significant changes, however, have less to do with setting than the nature of the ordeal the film chronicles. One of the most nerve-wracking genre premises ever has been pointlessly amped up: more gunplay, more characters, more romance and heroism.

As originally conceived by novelist Georges Arnaud, that premise is a model of nightmare minimalism, easily communicated via logline: A group of economically desperate men embark on a likely suicide mission, hauling two trucks full of unstably stored, highly volatile nitroglycerin across hundreds of miles of inconsistently paved terrain. There’s a big payday waiting for them on the other side, but will they live to collect? Hit the wrong bump along the way, and the cargo goes spectacularly up in flames.

Even if you’ve never personally white-knuckled your way through The Wages of Fear (the first movie or its out-of-print source material), you’ve probably felt its aftershocks. When Keanu Reeves climbed aboard a bus that couldn’t slow down in the 1994 action triumph Speed , he was steering down a road Clouzot paved four decades earlier. There’s a little of Wages in the Mission: Impossible franchise , with its escalating gauntlets of blink-and-die danger. And Christopher Nolan cited the movie as an influence on his Dunkirk , another suspense contraption that subjected frazzled men to a precarious crucible.

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And of course Wages has been remade before. The last official stab at reviving its assault on the nerves was 1977’s misleadingly titled Sorcerer , a costly Hollywood flop directed by the late William Friedkin. Though the director made his own tweaks to the story — moving it into a then-modern world of terrorist attacks and ruthless oil conglomerates — he preserved its simplicity. Four men. Two trucks. A dangerously detonatable cargo. Potential death around every bend.

The first Wages is still the ideal treatment of Arnaud’s ingenious, anxiety-inducing plot. After a perhaps overly protracted first act – a problem, truth be told, with all the adaptations, though Sorcerer handles the setup with more hypnotic style — Clouzot gets his anti-heroes behind the wheel and begins tightening the lug nuts. The obstacles facing the men are myriad. Drive too slow over the more textured stretches of road, and the truck might lurch too much and jostle the payload. Drive too fast, and you might lose control on a turn, and the explosive result is the same. Even the proximity of the two trucks to each other becomes a source of potential calamity; without the proper distance between the two, a one-lane route can easily become a collision course.

Clouzot hard-wires his audience to the nagging, expanding stress of his characters. We’re strapped right in there with them, feeling every inconvenient bump, wary of every upcoming obstacle posed by the landscape. It’s maybe the most literal demonstration ever of Hitchcock’s explanation of suspense as a bomb under the table that doesn’t explode. (Not for nothing was Clouzot often referred to as the French Hitchcock; he’s even said to have rushed to secure the rights to Arnaud’s book out of fear that the Master of Suspense might get to them first.) Wages is such a perfect instrument of anxiety that it’s actually rather surprising that there haven’t been even more attempts to do it again.

Maybe most have had the good sense not to try. Or maybe the commercial underperformance of Sorcerer , roundly ignored by the public in the summer of Star Wars , created the diesel stink of folly around the idea. Friedkin’s movie has been thankfully reclaimed in recent years , recognized as a rough-and-tumble classic in its own right. Though it may have trimmed some of the complications Clouzot exquisitely exploited, it justifies its existence via the pure physicality of the filmmaking. Friedkin gave those trucks a hellish center of gravity, making us feel their monstrous weight. The movie’s most famous sequence is a deranged practical stunt in which the director guided a real gas-guzzler over the most rickety bridge in all of South America — a spectacle of foolhardy perseverance on the part of the characters and filmmakers alike.

There’s nothing remotely as queasy-exciting in the new Wages . The best that can be said for the film is that it’s competently staged. But in retooling Arnaud’s timeless conceit for a new audience and era, Leclercq transforms it into something more generically diverting. Rather than hard-edged, mismatched outlaws, united only through a mutual dearth of options, the main characters are a pair of handsome brothers (Franck Gastambide and Alban Lenoir) mending their broken relationship after a robbery gone wrong. That’s the melodramatic fuel of their 500-mile pilgrimage, which plays less like an existential death trip — like an obstacle course of doom — than one of the sleek, international heist thrillers that have become Netflix bread and butter.

Worse still, this Wages distrusts the gut-wrenching power of its borrowed premise. Past adaptations suggested that every inch crossed on the road to delivery and deliverance could lead to fiery destruction, but Leclercq’s characters barrel along with blithe indifference to the liquid dynamite in the trailer. And that’s because the movie baffles their long drive into a series of high-speed chases and action-movie skirmishes, as bad guys put bullets in the trucks without sending them sky high. At one point, one of the brothers ends up standing on a landmine, and you have to wonder: Why did the film have to introduce a new form of explosive device when the very cargo they’re carrying is a variable bomb itself? The answer is that this Wages can’t wait to get out of the truck. It hasn’t the patience for the game it’s playing.

You don’t need faceless goons or backstabbing comrades or even the ticking clock (“You have 24 hours,” someone essentially intones) that Leclercq introduces here. The Wages of Fear , as it was written and first translated to the screen, is more elemental than all that. The enemies of the story are gravity and topography and speed and earth itself. To try and turn such a fatalistic thriller into something more fast and furious — complete with shootouts and blatantly fake CGI explosions — is to misunderstand its appeal.

In its truest form, The Wages of Fear is an impeccably bleak suspense contraption. It makes the very act of moving forward into a life-and-death proposition. It takes noir to its logical endpoint, with characters so screwed by their bad decisions and bad luck that one false turn could end it all for them. And in its portrait of men cornered into taking the worst job out there, it’s an enduring parable of strangulating capitalism — an element mostly defused by the more apolitical new version. You’d think a premise as potent as The Wages of Fear would be hard to screw up. But in the streaming age, there’s a bomb waiting around every corner and in every “Recommended For You” queue.

The Wages of Fear (2024) is now streaming on Netflix. The Wages of Fear (1953) is now streaming on Max. Sorcerer is available to rent or purchase from the major digital services. For more of A.A. Dowd’s writing, visit his  Authory page .

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Every month, licenses expire and movie and TV show titles are removed from streaming services like Netflix. In some cases, Netflix has even removed (and continues to remove) its own original series to make way for new content and to keep the interface fresh and up to date. Already in March, for example, movies like Air Force One, Shutter Island, Cake, and Scream 4 have been removed, as have shows like Borderliner (a Netflix original) and all three seasons of Sundance series Hap and Leonard.

What’s going next? We’re here to update you on which movies and TV shows will be leaving Netflix this month as well as when they’ll be leaving so you can watch them before they’re gone. Arrested Development, seasons 1-5 – 2013-2019 (leaving March 15)

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Netflix has ended its offer of a free trial of its service for customers in the U.S.

The free trial gave people 30 days’ access to the company’s huge library of streaming video content, but for reasons we’re yet to establish, Netflix has decided to do away with the offer.

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From twisty thrillers like Oldboy and Memories of Murder to global sensations like Parasite and Decision to Leave, South Korean cinema has become a staple for cinephiles. Its best movies span a variety of genres and come from different generations, with each one highlighting all the different aspects and unique elements that make the country's films worth discovering and celebrating. 7. Burning (2018)

The Last of Us Part I Review

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You almost have to admire the hedonism of looking at The Last of Us Remastered, which is still visually impressive eight years later, and saying, “Yeah, that looks pretty good, but we can do better.” There’s very little left to be said about the original The Last of Us, a potent, post-apocalyptic cocktail of stealth, survival, and slaughter that’s revered for its haunting storytelling in an amazingly well-crafted world. You almost certainly knew that. It’s widely lauded as one of the best games of all time and one of the few to get a 10 from IGN, but I reckon you knew that, too. In fact, it’s a game so nice they built it thrice, which is where we find ourselves with The Last of Us Part I – now the third version of Naughty Dog’s 2013 masterpiece to arrive inside a decade.

Unsurprisingly, this remake takes full advantage of the added grunt afforded to it by the PS5 by delivering astonishing new levels of detail and fluidity in its fully rebuilt world, characters, and animations. It's also equipped with some subtle but well-considered use of the haptic feedback in the DualSense controller, and a simply remarkable array of accessibility options. It’s missing the original’s multiplayer mode, but the result is undoubtedly the definitive way for solo players to experience this modern classic. Even so, there is something inherently inessential about it that it can’t quite shake, as a remake of an already fabulous remaster that remains a must-play on hardware only a single generation old.

Make no mistake: the story here in both the main game and the short prequel, Left Behind (which is included in Part I, still as a separate story), remains as strong, as captivating, and as shocking as it ever was. If you’ve yet to play it, The Last of Us is a tangled bramble of themes, but Naughty Dog weaves them together expertly. It may trade in despair, selfishness, and misery, but it’s also quick to lightly breathe on the embers of hope, redemption, and love that glow within its darkness. The upshot is an unforgettable journey that I still can’t recommend highly enough.

Of course, if you’re familiar with the story already, know that I really enjoyed watching it unfold all over again – from its harrowing opening chapter to its bruising final moments. Playing again actually confirmed to me a suspicion I’ve held since playing The Last of Us Part II: that the original remains superior over its sequel in terms of its story. The Last of Us Part II is a technically outstanding follow-up with a fascinating tale of its own that completely immersed me, but it’s an almost exclusively grim one, and the heavy spotlight on revenge, hate, and self-destruction is exhausting and disillusioning in a way the original is not. At least, not all the time.

A Joel New World

For clarity, The Last of Us Part I has been positioned as a complete rebuild for PS5 – a remake, and not a remaster. Despite some hand-wringing to the contrary, this does feel mostly true. While The Last of Us Part I features two display modes – one that achieves native 4K at a targeted 30 frames per second, and another that presents dynamic 4K at a targeted 60 frames per second – Naughty Dog has done much more here than simply dial up the resolution and crank out an increased framerate. Our full performance review of The Last of Us Part I goes into much more technical detail, but broadly speaking all the characters and environments have been remade entirely, and it does show.

While I’d agree that it’s been tough to see a vast gulf between 2014’s The Last of Us Remastered and The Last of Us Part I in the video comparisons Sony has been rationing out, I will caution that watching two cutscenes smooshed together on a smartphone screen probably isn’t the best way to appraise the meaningful differences here. In-game there’s definitely an overt leap in fidelity and quality. I opted for the dynamic 4K/60FPS performance mode and toggled off the film grain, as the higher frame rate makes for far, far smoother camera panning and the default grain effect honestly does little but obscure how good everything actually looks on the PS5.

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Among the most noticeable changes are the facts that foliage is denser, destructible objects are more abundant, and reflections are a standout. The soft lighting is also absolutely stunning, and it’s brimming with details so granular you’ll miss them if you don’t look closely enough. The way rain drizzles down Joel’s rifle and snakes down his wet shirt before dripping realistically off the bunched parts of his sleeves had me stopped in my tracks, as did how the light picks up airborne dust and spores in the dankest levels. It’s an absolutely top-shelf visual showcase of what the PlayStation 5 is capable of.

There have been some moderate redesigns for a couple of key characters, too – most notably Joel’s smuggling partner, Tess. I’ve seen some resistance to the updated Tess, but I think it’s a minor but smart change. Crafting a Tess that more authentically appears to be a woman in her 40s rather than her 20s paints her more as a generational peer of Joel’s, rather than a woman younger than his own daughter would have been 20 years after the outbreak. The faint hint of a relationship between the two that perhaps hasn’t always been entirely platonic makes way more sense in this context, and the later bond between Joel and Ellie is made all the more special when it’s clearer it’s not the kind of connection Joel could’ve made with Tess previously.

The Last of Us Part I does, however, lean on the exact same performance capture, voice acting, and cutscene direction that was used for the original PS3 version, Tess included. Admittedly, they have been touched up, and I do appreciate how the ultra-high level of facial detail has allowed Naughty Dog to extract even more subtle microexpressions from the cast’s performances. Even the small addition of flecks of spit shooting from a character’s mouth as they shout adds a new layer of intensity to the drama that I admire. It’s a testament to just how high-quality and future proof it all was in the 2013 original that there was simply no need to redo these story sequences wholesale, but it does mean I wouldn’t necessarily group The Last of Us Part I in quite the same category as rescripted, wall-to-wall do-overs like 2019’s Resident Evil 2 remake or 2020’s Mafia: Definitive Edition .

Endure and Survive

I did grow to miss the larger and regularly more vertical levels of Part II; with a few exceptions Part I’s levels are generally more intimate and compartmentalised, no doubt thanks to their origins of being designed to run on hardware that first debuted when Beyoncé was still 33% of Destiny’s Child and Netflix was still only renting DVDs via the post. I also missed the improved melee combat of Part II; Part I doesn’t feature the useful dodge move implemented in the sequel, nor the ability to go prone and crawl. The latter doesn’t feel like a huge loss considering the levels weren’t designed to ever require it in the first place, but the lack of a dodge feels odd considering bringing Part I’s gameplay more in line with Part II’s was a stated aim.

Naughty Dog has succeeded in a lot of other areas, though – especially with movement, which is a lot smoother than it was in the original and the 2014 remaster. Animations that seamlessly blend character movements from one direction to another make them appear less skatey and more connected to the ground. Joel and Ellie feel a little weightier as a result, which makes them feel more like they’re always really interacting with the world.

There have also been tweaks to the enemy AI, who skulk around the environments in unpredictable patterns and who are now far more effective at flanking and working in small teams to flush us out – just as they were in Part II. Part I has unfortunately stopped short of copying Part II’s brilliant trick of naming its unfortunate grunts for their buddies to call out in dismay as they stumble across their bodies, though. I thought that was quite a clever way of adding even more gravity to the bloodshed, and it’s a shame it didn’t make the cut. It also reduces, but doesn’t completely eliminate, instances where your AI buddy characters shuffle out into the open during stealth sequences and yet remain unseen, making it crystal clear that this is, in fact, a video game.

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The Last of Us Part I also features some of the best use of the DualSense’s haptics that I’ve felt to date. All manner of subtle feedback is mapped, from the sharp crunch of racking a shotgun shell to the rhythmic beat of a galloping horse. The triggers for weapons can sometimes feel a fraction too firm by default, but overall feeling what’s happening on screen in your hands adds a lot to the experience. The avalanche of haptics do appear to wreak hell on my controller battery, though – I haven’t finished a session yet with more than a single bar of charge left on it.

Finishing the story still takes about 20 hours, factoring in Left Behind’s two-and-a-half-hour campaign, and when you do it unlocks a pretty extensive set of outfits, visual modes, and gameplay modifiers. Messing around with costumes isn’t something I particularly value, although if you find adding a bit of individuality to your second playthrough attractive you may feel differently. I guess even I was temporarily distracted at the idea of making Ellie a Gran Turismo fan. I wouldn’t expect to get much mileage out of the visual modes, either. The comic-style filter, which flattens out the detail and throws a black outline on characters and key objects, is perhaps worth a look – but the bulk of them are simply coloured filters I can’t imagine playing through. The Last of Us but green! The Last of Us but red! The Last of Us but... dark red!

The gameplay modifiers, though, are easily the most appealing as far as I’m concerned, as they’re good old-fashioned cheats (a concept that is sadly virtually extinct in the modern games industry). Infinite ammo and crafting ingredients, slow motion, one-hit kills – all very neat to experiment with. Blasting infected and bandits to bits with unlimited exploding arrows may seem a bit off-brand in The Last of Us, but it’s bloody fun and more than a little cathartic after being on the run from those bastards for so long.

A gorgeous and well-honed remake of one of the biggest boppers in the PlayStation pantheon, The Last of Us Part I is the best way to play – or replay – Naughty Dog’s esteemed survival classic. The striking improvements it makes to its completely rebuilt world are complemented by the subtle refinements of its characters’ performances, and while it isn’t retrofitted with every one of the sequel’s best changes, the upgrades to movement and AI make a welcome difference in an already outstanding game. It’s harder to argue it was an entirely crucial remake, though, considering 2014’s The Last of Us Remastered still stands head and shoulders above nearly all of its story-driven, action-adventure peers to this day.

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