Thursday, July 29, 2021

Deliverance (1972)

Second or third viewing; previous viewing or viewings were between 1983 and 1986

Four men go river canoeing on a region that is about to be flooded for a dam. They have some unpleasant setbacks during their adventure, both from nature and from some locals.

Although I still consider this to be a memorable and remarkable film, it impressed me a lot less than on previous viewings. To begin with, this is clearly a sick fantasy which is unfair on the real people who live in the geographical region depicted in the movie. That being said, fiction has the advantage of always lending itself to a comical reading, and that struck me as the only approach that works with this movie (though previously I probably had a different, more naïve, reading of it). The key factor that made the film work as well as it did was Reynolds' brilliant performance.

Rating: 70 (down from 92)

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