Deliverance (1972)

A masterpiece. This is a survival thriller directed by John Boorman, and adapted by James Dickey from his 1970 novel. 

It stars Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox as four friends who take a disastrous canoe trip in the northern Georgia wilderness before the river is dammed and an entire community is erased. 

It works on multiple levels, like all great art. There’s a theme about poverty and the dispossessed – an entire band of society with no voice and no rights is abandoned and eradicated. Plus, there’s an ecological theme: we can never truly master the environment. There are also various moral questions that arise from their encounters with crazed locals. 

There’s a wonderful and poignant soundtrack. The film is beautifully shot. The characters are extremely well drawn. The dialogue is believable. The acting is uniformly strong. The storytelling is lucid. It’s moving, gripping and profound.

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