Deliverance (1972) (Deluxe Edition)

Terrific and powerful thriller

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Sep 3, 1999 | 1 out of 2 found this Deliverance (1972) review helpful

Horrifying and shocking are the prime words to describe Deliverance. Based on the powerful James Dickey's romance, the plot goes like this:four friends decide to spend the weekend descending the dangerous and treacherous rapidses of the "last unpoll...uted Georgia's river", willing to test their manhood in this hostile environment: this is just the premise of the most distressing and astonishing motion picture filmed back in the seventies With a budget that was not higher than 2 million dollars, the English filmmaker John Boorman directed this terrific masterpiece about the human cruelty (represented by the local's inhabitants) and the fight for survival that lives inside every men's heart (represented by Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox). Vilmos Szigmond's blinding photography opposes two "parts": the untouched nature's beauty and the perversity that waits for them in the margins. It is beyond me the reason for which this film didn't receive acting's nominations. The calm and slow beginning all of a sudden gives place to a second act when Ed (Jon Voight) and Bobby (Ned Beatty) take the front of the river and disembark in a small track. Then comes the most horrofying moment: Ed and Bobby meet two hillbillies and start a discussion. Ed tries to talk with the men but just worsen the things.And Bobby ends up being raped under gun point. When the mountain men get ready to attack Ed, Lewis (Burt Reynolds, who gives the movie's outstanding performance. He is terrific in the role that was refused by Marlon Brando) witnesses the scene and kills one of the homosexuals with his bow-and-arrow, but the other gets to escape. This explosive and dramatic moment (the rape scene is extremely unpleasant and gruesome, for its realism and for the explicit way in which Boorman filmed everything - this moment was shot just once, and the film maker used nine cameras to capture everything) is just an announcement for what is coming: in the middle of the forest's darkness with the evil watching them, the four friends need to decide what to do: hide the body, go after the other and kill him, so they can erase any crime evidence and they may escape from the authorities or tell the whole truth to the justice, taking the risk that resides in a possible trial. Nervous, oppressive and tense - this primitive court is the best scenes and is as scary (if not scarier) as The Blair Witch Project.When you see Ned Beatty's eyes in the previous seconds of the rape you remember the part in which Heather Donahue starts to crye for the camera and asks for forgiveness, they have a hunted animal's stare. Excessively violent,but terrifying realistic and dramatic, Deliverance is a classic that revitalized the suspense gender. When Boorman's film was released, the movies' industry was making important progresses in the form of telling a horror story.Deliverance made its own progresses. Read more Less