DELIVERANCE

That's right....we're going old school for today's movie review.  I had never seen Deliverance before, but knew that it was a classic, and I got a chance to catch a late night Cinemax viewing yesterday evening.

Deliverance is the story of 4 Atlanta businessmen who decide to take a 'boys weekend', and go rafting down the fictional Cahulawassee River in northern Georgia.  The 4 men (Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ron Cox) are clearly out of their element.  The locals appear to be, and are portrayed as, inbred, 2 teeth, overall wearing, banjo playing hillbillies. 

In the beginning of the movie, the four men stop for gas and Drew (Ron Cox) plays his guitar, to which a local boy playing a banjo joins in, and we get a rousing rendition of the classic 'dueling banjos'.  In fact, the song was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972, and the music serves as an undertone for the entire movie, being heard througout the film.

As you can imagine, not all goes as smoothly as the four men would have hoped.  The river is far more dangerous than they could have imagined.  Fast rapids, sharp rocks, and local mountain men with the worst of intentions.  The famous scene involving the mountain men and Bobby (Ned Beatty in his film debut) and Ed (Jon Voight - the star of the movie) is both cringe inducing and horror movie worthy.  It flows into a perfect what-would-you-do-if-it-happened-to-you scene where the 4 men argue the pros and cons of the situation, finally reaching a necessary, albeit nearly damning conclusion.

Things don't get any better for the foursome, as one bad thing leads to another, ending with the final scenes back on dry land, trying to convince the local sheriff (James Dickey, the author of the book in a cameo role here) that all is well, and they just want to go home. 

While there are long stretches of the movie where absolutely nothing happens, the amount of fear that you can't help but feel for the men is overwhelming - surely coming from the fact that it's a classic 'this could happen to me' movie.  The tension builds and builds, and slowly releases as the situations evolve, not giving you the quick payoff, but rather allowing you to ease into the moment.  The film is overwhelmingly anti-Appalachian, and undoubtedly ceased any vacation thoughts of visiting the area in the early 1970's. 

I found myself glued to the screen, and had absolutely no idea how it would end.  Nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1972 (eventually losing to The Godfather), you don't need me to tell you this was a good film, but I did enjoy it.  I stopped short of loving the movie, whether due to Burt Reynolds atrocious acting (he does have the laying down and moaning down pact though), or the long stretches of simply drifing down river, but it was a good movie.  I'm going with 3.5 out of 5 stars for this one, just short of 4.