Deliverance ***** (1972, Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox) – Classic Movie Review 3595

Producer-director John Boorman’s disturbing and chilling but thrilling 1972 adventure nightmare suspense thriller with a message is one of the key films of its era and an influential game-changer for this kind of story. It is so influential that its situation has been used and reused time and again in movies since. Take Eden Lake (2008) for just one example. Nevertheless, it is still hard to beat.

It stars Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox as four Atlanta city slickers on a tough adventure canoeing holiday in the dangerous American back-country of the Appalachian mountains. Voight plays even-keeled Ed Gentry, Beatty is condescending Bobby Trippe and Cox is wide-eyed Drew Ballinger.

Reynolds plays alpha male outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock, who takes his three buddies on an unforgettable river-rafting trip on the as yet unspoiled Cahulawassee River in Northern Georgia. There adventure turns into a nightmare when they are attacked by crazed hillbillies and have to battle for survival.

Fortunately in James Dickey’s screenplay (from his own novel), the conservationist message about man and nature takes back seat to a rattling good yarn, with both the actors and Boorman enjoying rare highest-quality popular material. The sequences of the flight from the rabid locals down the rapids and the Duelling Banjos are among the film’s notable highlights.

Boorman’s inspired direction is extraordinarily powerful and filmic. It is one of this uneven director’s greatest movies. Vilmos Zsigmond’s great outdoors cinematography is superb. And all of the actors are on their finest form. How good the young Reynolds and Voight are! Indeed, everyone is inspired by the material.

It represents the débuts of both Beatty and Cox; author Dickey appears as a sheriff; Boorman’s son Charley plays Voight’s son. Also in the cast are Bill McKinney, Herbert (Cowboy) Coward, Ed Ramey, Billy Redden, Seamon Glass, Randall Deal, Lewis Crone, Pete Ware, Louise Coldron, Kathy Rickman, Ken Keener and Johnny Popwell.

RIP the much-loved Burt Reynolds, who died of cardiac arrest on 6 September 2018, in Jupiter, Florida, aged 82. Deliverance may be his best movie.

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3595 derekwinnert.com