William Friedkin is one of my favorite filmmakers. The Exorcist, The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A., The Hunted, Bug. My favorite episode of the 1980s Twilight Zone — Nightcrawlers — was helmed by him. And Sorcerer is arguably his best work ever.

The story centers on four men, different in every aspect except one: they’re all hiding from the repercussions of bad choices. They’re desperate, dangerous men and they’re hired to transport highly unstable nitroglycerin 200 miles into the most treacherous brush I’ve ever seen on screen. Anyone who knows anything about Sorcerer knows the bridge sequence is a master thesis in unnerving tension. It surpasses most every suspense scene ever. I love the ferry assault in War of the Worlds, the opening to Inglorious Basterds and Clarice’s descent into Buffalo Bill’s dungeon in Silence of the Lambs, but nothing has (or most likely will) come close to that bridge scene.

The film itself is a meditation on the social contract. We live and work with one another — often times at our own detriment — because that’s the order society has issued us. These four men, so distrusting and jaded, should not be working with one another. Their first instinct should be personal survival. But the movie’s theme  — and the plot’s success — force them to carry each other (and us) forward.

It’s also an intensely spiritual film. Darkness defines the light and Roy Scheider’s character steps a foot (or two) into madness before his journey’s complete. Lost and wandering into hopelessness, it’s the job that keeps him from dying, and the ability to overcome both a physical and personal hell that makes the film’s final cut to black a Pyrrhic victory.