Director: John Boorman
Starring: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds
My Rating: Liked It
Deliverance, if you don't already know, is about a group of city slickers, so to speak, who go to canoe on a river because the whole area is about to be washed out. The group ends up encountering some locals who don't take kindly to their presence.
In the most basic sense, this movie works. It's an adventure film, through and through. I've heard a bunch of people claim that Deliverance is a classic, and honestly I don't think it deserves that status. The acting is grade A and the tension is palpable, but I got the sense that the movie was trying to have some grand meaning about the nature of man. If it did, I didn't get it. It's a simple movie about some guys who go on a trip and have really bad luck along the way.
And don't get me started on Voight's character being able to climb the side of that rocky mountain. I was laughing at how ridiculous that was. In that instant the movie turned from quasi-realistic to absolute fantasy. Deliverance certainly isn't a bad film, but I don't think it has aged very well.