Review of "Deliverance," DVD version

Review of

Deliverance, DVD version


Four out of five stars

Male bonding adventure gone very awry

 This movie opens up with a very basic premise, four businessmen from Atlanta are about to take a canoe trip down a very rough river in the most rural of areas in the mountains of Georgia. A dam has been constructed that will create a lake out of most of the river, so this is their last chance to experience this adventure.

 In one of the best scenes ever in a movie, early on one of the men plays the instrumental song “Dueling Banjoes” with a local boy. All of the local men are portrayed as mentally weak and backward and treated as such by the four men from the city. The boy on the banjo is portrayed as an idiot savant in the area of music.

 What seems to be a pending duel between man and nature quickly becomes a battle between the four men, nature and two very rough men of the mountains. When the two teams of two are separated, one of the teams encounters two local men that are portrayed as being slightly above animals. One of the businessmen is sexually assaulted and when the two locals start planning to sexually assault the other, he is shot dead by a hunting arrow.

 This increases the tension as the four men debate what to do with the body. They eventually decide and continue on their trip. However, all is not well within the group, and when one appears to passively just fall out of the boat and drown, they believe that he was shot, even though no one heard the sound of a gun.

 After one receives a serious injury, the three remaining men finally make it back to civilization and tell their made up story to local law enforcement. While there is no hard evidence that they are lying, the deputies do not believe them.

 This movie was groundbreaking in the sense that it portrays some types of sexual content that was generally taboo in the mainstream movies. It is an action/adventure movie that is harsh and unpredictable. One most significant fact about the movie is that the four male actors did their own stunts, when the canoes are going over the rapids, it is the actors that are riding the waves.