Deliverance - 1972

Some movies are very wrongfully known for one thing, one scene, one character, actor, director, sequence, etc. I guess it is something about us as humans and how memory works, and even to the point where we mistake certain things sometimes, adding a word or changing a sentence or idea as we look back on it.

Spoilers present in this review. Deliverance is a movie about which I only heard one thing, and you can practically say it with me here: "I'm gonna make you squeal like a pig." I guess it is known, talked about, accepted that this is a movie wherein not only is there a male on male rape scene, but it has this extremely disturbing, degrading line associated with that. That line, while something is said close it it, does not appear in the movie exactly as I wrote. I'm not making my review about that false quote, I'm simply stating that is primarily the one thing everyone knows about this movie.

I knew Burt Reynolds was in it, maybe I knew John Voight was. I didn't know much else about it. As the movie begins, we have Burt Reynolds as a tough alpha type leading a group of four guys on a canoe trip. They are going to some middle of nowhere river not quite on the roads well travelled. They encounter some backwoods rednecks who dislike the intrusion, and there's a famous sequence of Ronny Cox playing some guitar track with a kid on a banjo. Soon enough the four disembark on the trip, but little do they know there are more of these rednecks in the surrounding woods...

There's little plot, and it's one of those that is more driven by suspense and terror than anything else. This is a real suspenseful movie, and I love love loved the choices they made surrounding many of the key aspects. The way the camera can lurk behind trees, can watch from a removed and voyeuristic distance, the impact of the minimalism is in full force here. The actors are are awesome, packed to the gills with exuberance and power, but all the same incredibly delicate and sincere. When the drama builds, they cut all music from the movie for an eerie 40 or so approximate minutes, and that was so, so fucking cool. I loved that.

I feel like this was a movie that I heard about the disturbing elements, but nothing else about it. I understand the takeaway, but I feel like the canoing scenes and the dramatic tension was really the best part of the movie. After their friend is shot in the canoe, Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty realize they are being hunted, and that is such a great 20 minutes or so in the film, it is my favorite pick.

The movie was divisive, and I think part of it is the ending and the length. We follow a little of the investigation into the guys when they get back, we see Jon Voight mostly as he deals with some police investigation and with some personal conflicts. But it doesn't really go anywhere, and feels a bit unnecessary. My guess would be that they were trying to make it like the book, which likely doesn't have an abrupt ending either, but I think any character insight or growth maybe supposed to be present didn't quite work out. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to say whether that whole last 15 or so minutes could/should be cut out entirely. I dunno.

It's still a reallu awesome powerful film with a lot to say, and it manages to say it all. 4 stars.