[2] Frenchmen Mario and Jo, Dutchman Bimba and Italian Luigi are stuck in the isolated town of Las Piedras.

SOC exploits local workers and takes the law into its own hands, but the townspeople depend on it and suffer in silence.

Bimba is an intense, quiet man whose father was murdered by the Nazis and who himself worked for three years in a salt mine.

Luigi, Mario's roommate, is a jovial, hardworking man, who has just learned that he is dying from cement dust in his lungs.

With short notice and lack of proper equipment, it must be transported within jerrycans placed in two large trucks from the SOC headquarters, 500 km (300 miles) away.

Due to the poor condition of the roads and the highly volatile nature of nitroglycerin, the job is considered too dangerous for the unionized SOC employees.

The pool of applicants is narrowed down to four drivers: Mario, Bimba and Luigi are chosen, along with a German named Smerloff.

Jo and Mario transport the nitroglycerin in one vehicle; Luigi and Bimba are in the other, with thirty minutes separating them in order to limit potential casualties.

Mario and Jo arrive at the scene of the explosion only to find a large crater rapidly filling with oil from a pipeline ruptured in the blast.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "The excitement derives entirely from the awareness of nitroglycerine and the gingerly, breathless handling of it.

"[6] In 1992, Roger Ebert stated that "The film's extended suspense sequences deserve a place among the great stretches of cinema.

"[7] Leonard Maltin awarded the film 3+1⁄2 out of 4 stars, calling it a "marvelously gritty and extremely suspenseful epic".

[16][17] It has greatly improved audio and video quality,[18][19] and has been released on Blu-ray, DVD and DCP in France (TF1 Vidéo), the UK (BFI) and Japan (IVC).

Directed by Julien Leclercq, the new film stars Franck Gastambide, Alban Lenoir, Ana Girardot and Sofiane Zermani.