I received the blu-ray of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer a couple weeks ago, and it turned out to be an example of a director given an unlimited budget with no constraints. Friedkin had had a couple of big hits so he could write his own ticket, and the result was a big mess.

Now some folks claim that Sorcerer is a masterpiece; I’m not one of them. I couldn’t even finish watching it.

It begins with scenes of several different characters breaking the law in various parts of the world to show how they all end up in a small village in South America, but the scenes take too long without getting the viewer (at least not this viewer) engaged in their stories, so that by the time an hour has passed and the real story begins of transporting some unstable dynamite, I had totally lost interest.

In fact, the most interesting thing in the whole movie for me was when this guy appeared, and I instantly recognized him as having played a minor role on one of my favorite shows.

Maybe I’ll finish watching it some day.

Meanwhile, the blu-ray of Cruising was delayed by several weeks, and when it finally arrived, the envelope was not sealed and it was empty.

So I called Amazon, and after some difficulty had them send me another one, which arrived a couple days ago. So I expect to watch it in the near future.

[The fellow in the photo is Ramon Bieri, who played the role of Gene Galecki, the father of the bride of Dr. Mark Craig’s son, in four episodes.]