50th Anniversary, shown in 35mm! Given primal verve by John Boorman's unflinching direction and Burt Reynolds' star-making performance, Deliverance remains a terrifying adventure.
Four city-dwelling friends (Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox) decide to get away from their jobs, wives and kids for a week of canoeing in rural Georgia. When the men arrive, they are not welcomed by the backwoods locals, who stalk the vacationers and savagely attack them in the woods. Reeling from the ambush, the friends attempt to return home but are surrounded by dangerous rapids and pursued by a madman. Soon, their canoe trip turns into a fight for survival.
"Deliverance remains relevant to a country eternally hand-wringing about the supposed erosion of masculine ideals and forever divided down lines of geography and topography. If anything, the movie’s violent conflict looks like a premonition of the culture wars of today." - The Guardian
"Dickey taps into that stark mortal terror of abandoning control, where to become a wild man is somehow a form of connection. This becomes disarming when you consider that the act of suffering and the sense of being in touch with your life are, indeed, strange bedfellows." Slant Magazine