Le salaire de la peur

Las Piedras, Venezuela. To adventurers and exiles from Europe, the bleakest town at the back of beyond is a dead-end. In the scorching heat of the jungle, they kill time boozing and gambling, and waiting for a chance to take off. An opportunity presents itself when an oil well catches fire 500 km away. Only a charge of nitroglycerine can extinguish the fire. Two thousand dollars awaits each driver who delivers his explosive load – but the job is a suicide mission. Four men who could hardly be more different from one another set off on the journey. A German who escaped from the Nazis, a Corsican, a French gangster and an Italian become traveling companions and rivals. They are gripped by fear, and driven on by the hope of making a stack of money. The men in the lorries feel their way forwards through the impassable terrain, in which every hole, every stone, every puddle and every slope poses a deadly danger.