The cast is good, the action beats solid and the explosions are epic in the latest French updating of an all-time action classic, “The Wages of Fear.”

But almost everything else about this version ranges from “inferior” to “clumsy” to laughably dumb.

The original 1953 thriller, and the 1977 William Friedkin remake “Sorcerer,” emphasized the “esperation of the men involved in a near-impossible truck transport of volatile nitroglycerin through nearly impassible South American terrain. We’re introduced to their poverty, guess at bits of their guilt-and-despair torn backstories, and understand that they take the job because they have nothing to lose.

This Julian Leclercq (“Sentinelle,” “The Assault”) remake updates the story but botches the introductions, gives the characters affluence and “options,” and waters down the “desperation.”

The setting here is in an Islamic desert state that’s just experienced a coup, and not a poor and backward Latin American country covered in jungle with few decent roads to speak of. Fair enough.

But our prologue shows us more of that coup than we need to see, how a bodyguard, Fred (Franck Gastambide) fails to get his rich and corrupt client out by “boat,” and how once that client is executed by corrupt cops, Fred enlists his married brother Alex (Alban Lenoir) to fetch some explosives from his workplace to help him blow the rich guy’s safe.

“There’s no risk,” Fred assures husband and father Alex, in French with subtitles, or dubbed into English. “Trust me.”

That lands Alex in a Third World prison and creates obligations for “Uncle Fred,” who must look after his brother’s NGO teacher wife and little girl in a fortified oil-well village (population “5000”) in the middle of nowhere.

When “bandits” damage the well, the fire has to be put out to save the villagers. An oil company exec enslists failed-bodyguard and ex-trucker Fred, and bribes Alex out of prison to handle the explosives, which even though “nobody’s used this sort of” volatile nitroglycerin “in 30 years,” is the only thing the oil company honcho (Astrid Whettnall) can think of to do the job.

There are stakes in this set-up, but there’s zero sense of desparation and little “urgency” in this “humanitarian” mission that entails driving a couple of trucks, with armed support vehicles, 500 miles to blow up and snuff out that potentially disastrous well fire. Thirty minutes in, the “ticking clock” is introduced, but rarely re-introduced.

The “obstacles” include “bandit” road blocks, snipers, a minefield and a punctured pipeline, led off by the fact that they have to “steal” the delicate vials of nitro from a solar panel power station.

Um, why? The clunky script wastes screen time saying that this explosive isn’t used for a reason, but not why they’re still using it. “Explaining” why they can’t transport it by helicopter is just as muddled as the unexplained “theft” required to set this mission in motion.

There’s a love story. Fred is sexually fond of NGO doctor Clara (Ana Giradot) who gets to come along as she knows “the roads.”

The brothers have bitter unfinished business. The company goon (Sofiane Zermani) who comes along with a protection “team” is awfully trigger happy, and greedy. The natives are merely armed obstacles, Islamic stereotypes. And the finale feels perfunctory, heartless and unearned.

Leclercq’s remake of an “all time classic” thriller feels wrong-footed, right from the start. These aren’t broke, broken characters willing to take suicidal risks because they have nothing to lose. They’re not out of their depth, though it’s hard to think of bald tough-guy Fred as a “professional” as easily as he gives up his “client” to murderous cops in the convoluted and somewhat unnecessary prologue.

Botching the set-up doesn’t kill this “Wages of Fear.” But it weighs on it as the quest gets underway. And then we’re reminded of how unsatisfying it all is via a just-as-botched finale. That makes these “Wages” “minimum wage,” from start to finish.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, gunplay, sex/nudity, profanity, smoking

Cast: Franck Gastambide, Alban Lenoir, Ana Giradot, Bakary Diombara, Astrid Whettnall and Sofiane Zermani

Credits: Directed by Julien Leclercq, scripted by Hamid Hlioua and Julien Leclercq, based on the George Arnaud novel and the 1953 film adaptation by Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jérôme Géronimi. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44