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Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Growing up, I have been camping with my dad and brother several times. There were a few spots that we went to, as there was a camping ground near the beach and another one on the military base. I liked the times camping as my dad and brother fished, made food using a little fire, and slept in a tent and sleeping bag. It was never a bad time. There is a film out there that showed some horrors of camping. When coming from a big city to a small rural town can turn sadistic and deadly.
Directed by John Boorman and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, Deliverance is a film where a camping trip goes terribly wrong. In the great state of Georgia, four Atlanta businessmen, Lewis Medlock (Reynolds), Ed Gentry (Voight), Bobby Trippe (Beatty), and Drew Ballinger (Cox), decide to have a boys’ weekend and canoe down a river in the remote wilderness in Northern Georgia before it is dammed. Lewis is the leader of the crew and an avid outdoorsman. Ed has rolled with Lewis on a couple of trips but is always nervous, while Lewis is a freaking badass. The pair convinces Bobby and Drew to roll with them. After meeting a few locals and being somewhat harassed, Drew engages in an epic musical duel with a young boy. Things seem to be going well for the four men. As they launch their canoes, they soon learn that their weekend away is about to turn horribly bad. Will they survive the wilderness and make it back home?
I want to say that I expected what would happen, but not on this level. I heard about the dueling banjos scene and the rape scene, but it is one thing to hear about it and another to see it. This film will make you rethink camping in the rural south. The film starts off innocently enough with the four friends going camping. They might be city dwellers, but it seems like a good time to connect. After some awkward getting to know the locals, they head off in their canoes. Shit hits the fan when they get separated. This is where the horror of the trip begins for the pair.
Ed and Bobby encounter a pair of mountain men emerging from the woods. One has a shotgun, and the other is looking at Bobby like he is a delicious meal. Ed is tied up to a tree, and Bobby is forced to get naked. The man chases Bobby around like a pig and then rapes him while demanding for him to “squeal like a pig.” The scene is different and hard to watch because I can’t think of another film that showed a man being raped. There are plenty out there against women, and those are extremely hard to watch, but this one set a new tone.
After the rape scene, the film picks up with vengeance and coverup. Lewis, the hardest person in the world, sneaks up and kills one of the dudes with a bow and arrow. After some heated conversations, the idea of doing the right thing and trying to survive comes into play: whether to call the cops or bury the body and act as if nothing happened. They elect the latter and continue down the river in the canoes.
The film hits the next stage as the rapids become intense. The canoes collide on the rocks as the three of the men are thrown into the river. Bad man Lewis breaks his femur while Drew slumps over. Lewis thinks he has been shot and tells Ed that the killer must be on the rocks. Ed climbs up and sees a mountain man. Ed has no confidence in himself, and an intense scene happens between the two where Ed manages to kill the man but falls on his own arrow. Really? This is when another debate scene happens. Ed and Bobby decide to weigh down the body that Ed killed, and when they find Drew’s body, they do the same and come up with another story about how he died. That is three people whose story you need to come up with.
Lewis is taken to the hospital after the friends return to the town, and an investigation begins. The friends tell the story of how Drew died, and while the sheriff knows they are lying, he has no evidence. The ending showed the psychological trauma the friends would probably go through until the end of their lives.
I want to give props to the most iconic music play-off in film history. The dueling banjos scene was something to watch. You hear the beginning strings often, but seeing it in this film was surprising. As the others watched, Drew and the young boy seemed to enjoy the little competition against each other. It was the one positive moment in the film, but it foreshadowed what was to come. As the pair stopped playing and Drew went to shake the boy’s hand, he turned his head and ignored Drew. The boy reappears once again to watch the group travel down the river. Homeboy was telling them that they were about to die.
I have to give it up to the acting in this film. It propelled the film, and seeing the men go through what they did added a certain intensity. First, I want to give it up to Burt Reynolds as Lewis Medlock. Reynolds looked straight-up JACKED in this film and didn’t look like a man from the city. Reynolds made Lewis look like a dude who was about to fight in a war, and he used his bow and arrow with deadly force.
Jon Voight as Ed Gentry was interesting. He was a weak character that grew a set for his friend. I think that is what made him a compelling character. He watched his homeboy get raped and really didn’t do anything. When he had to kill a person, he managed to do it but also fell on his own arrow.
Finally, there is Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, which was their first film. Beatty, as Bobby Trippe, was the one who got it the worst. I give Beatty all the credit in the role for reading the script, seeing the scene he had to do, and was like, “Here we go.” Ronny Cox as Drew Ballinger was equally entertaining. His shine-through scene was when he played the guitar at the scene’s start. He was the only character to die, but he made an impact on this film.
Deliverance is one of those films that are not for the faint of heart. The dueling banjo scene is fun to watch, but after that, shit goes down for the four men. The rape scene is hard to watch, but that is with any film. This film makes you want to avoid canoeing down any river in the south.
