"A one-of-a-kind film that will have you on the edge of your seat. The suspense is overwhelming, as men attempt to haul truckloads of nitroglycerin along a hellish South American road. It’s a delight to watch Yves Montand sweat it out."

"One of the most harrowing films ever made. Clouzot has impossibly constructed a thriller about a life-threatening journey in a truck that never goes above six miles an hour! Nail-biting and riveting, with wonderful and insightful character development, it’s a film that’s also about greed and desperation, with terrific performances from Yves Montand and Charles Vanel."

"I actually went to the theater as an eleven-year-old and saw this film in its original release. (I know. Weird.) The cinematography (Raoul Coutard), the editing (Françoise Bonnot won the Oscar), the score by Mikis Theodorakis, and the performances by Yves Montand, Irene Papas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant created an overall intensity that overwhelmed me. One of the most searing political thrillers ever made, and one of Costa-Gavras’s greatest, it won best foreign language film at the Academy Awards in 1970."