To say it’s an extraordinary sit is not doing justice to this the nail-biting, anxiety-inducing, nihilistic look at the world.

| Original Score: A | Mar 25, 2025

The movie feels modern, even though it was made more than 70 years ago.

| Mar 25, 2025

Your blood pressure will go up to dangerous levels while watching this.

| Feb 11, 2025

A grindingly cynical study of human nature, with each participant willing to sacrifice the others for a bigger payoff.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 4, 2024

…this venerable, classic, timeless movie has been artfully revived (via 2024 UHD) n a way that should have you vibrating all the way to South America and back, over 500km of bad road…

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 19, 2024

Cluzot’s treatment of the finale (I sighed in relief at his staying with the juggernaut irony of the book) is a tour de force. The actors are inordinately real, especially Charles Vanel.

| Jan 30, 2024

Clouzot’s stark, simple imagery and painstaking attention to detail creates a riveting tension that never lets up.... It’s a white knuckler of the top rank.

| Aug 19, 2023

Henri-Georges Clouzot was the only man that Alfred Hitchcock considered a serious rival in terms of suspense in filmmaking, and The Wages of Fear is a resounding blow in the French master’s favor.

| Aug 1, 2023

[UPDATED 2025 4K + BLU-RAY REVIEW] Nitroglycerin figures prominently in the plot of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, but it’s the movie itself that’s truly explosive, a powder keg of social outrage and cinematic thrills.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 31, 2023

Clouzot makes the most of the suspense inherent in such a tale, you can be sure, but his attitude is hopeless from the start and a sense of doom hangs over the film from the very beginning, long before the terrible end.

| Jun 7, 2022

The brutal narrative cynicism and political commentary in The Wages of Fear indicate the unflinching nature of its maker.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 21, 2022

...the greatest thriller to ever turn a moviegoer's knuckles white.

| Aug 10, 2020

The Wages of Fear will keep you tipped forward on the edge of your seat, your palms sweaty and your heart thumping wildly.

| Jul 16, 2019

A masterpiece of cruel suspense.

| May 31, 2018

The actual driving scenes are full of suspense and bit of humour. You can tell Clouzot has fun putting the viewer in a false sense of security.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 15, 2018

This is filmmaking at its very best and rarely does a film grip with such intensity, some scenes being almost unbearable to watch as the situations the men find themselves in create palpable tension, which you believe utterly.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 18, 2017

Turning the screws with a relentlessness that impresses even in this age of the ruthless, high-tech thriller, Clouzot strings together situations of vividly, almost sadistically imagined danger.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 1, 2014

Anti-capitalist exciting existential adventure film.

| Original Score: A | Mar 25, 2013

Hitch's bomb-under-the-table suspense formula burnished to an expert sheen.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 6, 2011

The Wages of Fear contains tension-fraught stretches of "pure cinema" that probably gave even the Master cold sweats.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 6, 2011