The Wages of Fear Parent Guide

Drilling oil is a dangerous business, made more perilous when a wellhead catches fire. Located next to a refugee camp in the North African desert, the site is so remote that there’s no way to get firefighting equipment there quickly. If the fire continues, it will overpressure the entire oil pocket, which will blow up the camp.

The only hope is to get some heavy explosives to the fire – the vacuum caused by a major blast will suck the oxygen right out of the fire, if it is placed near enough. Unfortunately, out in the desert, there aren’t any modern, stable plastic explosives; just 50 year old nitroglycerine – incredibly volatile, very easy to accidentally detonate – and 800 kilometers of unimproved desert roads, plagued by mines, bandits, and potentially most dangerously, potholes. Oh, and the emergency team is on the clock: if they don’t make it inside of the next 20 hours, there won’t be a camp to save.

Sounds like a winner, doesn’t it? Tension, high stakes, truckloads of high explosives – this flick should be a blast, pun intended. Unfortunately, half the film is completely wasted on a pointless interpersonal conflict between two of the protagonists so by the time they get in the nitro-laden crater-delivery-vehicle, you’re kind of rooting for a big bump, just to liven things up a little.

Once the movie speeds along on the main plotline, things improve…somewhat. There are a few genuinely exciting scenes involving the delicate handling of obstacles, but most problems get solved when someone pulls out a gun, or just starts throwing jars of nitroglycerin at people like this is some kind of dodgeball for demolition experts. (I’m sure that’ll work out for the best.) Ultimately, the movie isn’t as interesting as its premise, falling back on the most familiar tropes of the genre and desperately avoiding anything that would make this worth the time it takes to watch.

There’s less profanity than you might expect with the TV-MA rating, but still enough to make family viewing inadvisable. Most of the issues here have to do with the frequent bloody violence, but there’s also a flagrantly unnecessary sex scene in the first ten minutes, which you can feel free to skip. Frankly, you can feel free to skip the first thirty minutes, but if it were up to me, I’d give the whole business a miss.