Deliverance - 70s Week

This film falls into the same vein as road trips do for me. A group of people on an adventure with arriving at point B in mind. Now when everyone thinks of this movie there are two things that come to mind. Obviously the dueling guitar/banjo sequence in the beginning of the film, and of course the hillbilly rape scene. Both are very strong sequences in the film and serve specific purposes to the story. Before I get into that here’s the plot. It’s simple, but works beautifully. 4 friends head off on a downriver canoe trip and along the way they come across a band of hillbillies that torment them. The movie then turns into a survival flick.

The first scene (banjo playing) puts our heroes off guard. They connect with the locals through the beauty of music. Even the older man begins to do a hillbilly jig dance while they are playing. Everyone is all smiles, but when the music stops the people become immediately standoffish again. As if they cannot relate to them anymore or do not know how to. This is reinforced as they pass underneath the bridge where the young boy is standing on top of. Although the man tries to remind the child by playing air guitar with the paddle who he is, the boy just stares back with an empty expression of unfamiliarity. It’s almost as if he is wondering why they would ever want to go down that river into the woods of Georgia.

The character transformations in this film are interesting. First off, you have Burt Reynolds who is the big cheese and isn’t afraid of anything or anyone. When he’s asked when he doesn’t believe in insurance, he replies “I don’t believe in insurance. There’s no risk then.” But as the movie progresses Jon Voight, who at one time was to gun shy to kill a deer with an arrow, becomes the savior of the group. In contrast, Burt becomes hurt and has to be taken care of by the other two men.

Some of shining moments in this film, in regards to acting and plot movement, happen after Burt kills the man with an arrow. Then the stereotypical ‘morale dilemma’ discussion begins. There is always one person in the collective group who would rather bring in the authorities and tell them what they did rather than cover it up and get away scott-free. Luckily for them, that man dies shortly after as they head off downstream. It was never made clear if he was shot to death or if the rocks got him first. We’ve seen this typical of character/group dilemma before: TRAINING DAY, DON’T TELL MOM THE BABYSITTERS DEAD, WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S, and the king of them all for this situation – VERY BAD THINGS. Friends who have to band together in order to survive and they set aside ‘doing the right thing’ in order to do this.

In the final fifteen minutes of the film it felt there should have been some other twist or startling realization from the main characters as they interacted with the locals. I kept expecting the hillbilly with no teeth to walk out of the kitchen or cop car or something. The pacing screamed for something else to happen! But it never did.

I was trying to think of other films that involved rafting or canoeing. Here is what I came up with: THE RIVER WILD, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, INTO THE WILD, WITHOUT A PADDLE, and MAN OF THE HOUSE (oh yeah! JTT!!!). Not a film for those who don’t want to see an overweight man get ridden like a pig and then raped. So I guess that would drastically lower the target demographic for this film. Lol. “Git up and give me a ride boy!”

Rating: 8/10