The Wages of Fear (1953)

Desperate men will undertake desperate acts. Four Europeans, stuck in a South American desert town where the only way out is by plane and the only way to afford a ticket is to have jobs not afforded to foreigners, learn for themselves when they are offered the chance to earn $2000 to transport nitroglycerine through perilous roads in order to extinguish an oil well fire hundreds of miles away . A good percentage of the film is spent with the men in town: their relations with each other, the desolation of the location, and the stranglehold the American oil company has over all of the town’s inhabitants. Once the trucks get on the road, there is not another film that exhibits as much tension. There’s the sense that the watcher themselves need to be careful as possible to get the vehicles safely to their destination. I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until they had safely passed one obstacle or another.