Deliverance (1972)

Directed by

John Boorman

Genre

drama film, adventure film, rape and revenge film, thriller film, suspense film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 50m

Rated

R

Rating

7.3 of 10 from 1,827 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Four businessmen from Atlanta travel into the remote Georgia wilderness for a whitewater canoe trip down a river that is about to be dammed. They encounter dangerous locals and harsh natural conditions that turn their adventure into a struggle for survival.

tenseharrowingbleakatmosphericsurvivaluneasygroundedvisceralclaustrophobic

What happens

Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film directed and produced by John Boorman from a screenplay by James Dickey, who adapted it from his 1970 novel. It follows four businessmen from Atlanta who venture into the remote northern Georgia wilderness to go whitewater canoeing down the Cahulawassee River before it is dammed, only to find themselves in danger from the area's inhabitants and nature. It stars Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. Deliverance was a critical and commercial success. It earned three Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, and grossed $46.1 million on a budget of $2 million. It became a popular culture landmark for a scene featuring Cox's character playing "Dueling Banjos" on guitar with a banjo-picking country boy, and garnered notoriety for a scene in which Beatty's character is brutally raped by a mountain man. In 2008, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In retrospective analysis, the film has since garnered criticism from journalists, historians, and citizens of Rabun County, Georgia, where the film was shot, for its portrayal of the people and culture of Appalachia, its promotion of Appalachian stereotypes in film and television, and even has been labeled as an anti-working class and an anti-rural film. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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