--- title: "Deliverance" year: 1972 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/deliverance" fi1m_score: 85 critics_score: 78 critics_reviews: 12 published: "2026-09-20T05:31:39.352765+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T05:31:39.959647+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Deliverance (1972) Directed by John Boorman · 1h 49m · MPA R · Drama, Adventure, Thriller **Fi1m score: 85** · Critics 78 from 12 reviews *In a sentence:* A weekend canoe trip with the one friend who owns a bow and arrow, and it goes about as well as you’d fear > John Boorman’s river thriller is still frightening and still hard to look away from, shot by Vilmos Zsigmond in drained greens and tea-brown water, with Jon Voight doing the best work of the four. James Dickey’s dialogue keeps explaining what the pictures have already said. ## Synopsis Lewis Medlock (Burt Reynolds) has talked three friends from Atlanta into canoeing the Cahulawassee River through the north Georgia mountains before a new dam turns the whole valley into a lake. Ed Gentry (Jon Voight) is the quiet one who goes along with whatever Lewis says. Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty) sells insurance and has never held a paddle. Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox) brings his guitar. At a petrol station in the last town before the water, Drew plays a duet with a local boy, Lonnie (Billy Redden), on banjo, while Lewis haggles with the Griner brothers (Seamon Glass, Randall Deal) to drive the cars downstream to Aintry. The first day is rapids, sunshine and a camp on the bank. On the second morning the two canoes drift apart, and Ed and Bobby put ashore to wait. ## Review Lewis Medlock has decided that the Cahulawassee is the last wild river in the South and that it will be under a lake within the year, so he and three friends are going to canoe it while it is still there. That is the whole plan, and John Boorman, directing and producing from James Dickey’s own adaptation of his novel, spends the first half hour making it look like a reasonable one. *Deliverance* is a fine film and a frightening one, and its flaw is that Dickey’s script keeps telling us what Vilmos Zsigmond’s camera has already shown. The men arrive at a hill town of junked cars and tin roofs, and Boorman lets us look at the locals for exactly as long as the four Atlanta men do, which is too long and not long enough. Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox) gets his guitar out and finds himself in a duet with a boy on a porch, Lonnie (Billy Redden), on banjo. It is a lovely scene: an old man (Ed Ramey) dances in the dust, the tune speeds up, everyone grins. Then Drew reaches out a hand and the boy turns his face away, and we felt the afternoon go cold. Nothing has happened. Boorman has simply shown us that the men think they are being welcomed and they are being watched. Zsigmond drains the colour out of everything. The trees are grey with some green left in them, the water is the brown of strong tea, and the men’s life jackets are the loudest things on screen, which is the point: they do not belong here and the river can see them coming. He shoots the gorge from high up, the two canoes tiny in it, and then from water level with spray on the lens. Tom Priestley cuts the rapids so that we always know which boat is ahead, who has the paddle and where the rock is. The actors are plainly in the water. There is almost no music apart from what the men and the boy play, and the quiet on the river does more than a score would have. Burt Reynolds plays Lewis as a man who has read the survival books and looks at his own arms a good deal, and he is funnier than the film gets credit for; he knows Lewis is slightly ridiculous and lets him be. Jon Voight’s Ed is the one the film belongs to. He does almost nothing for the first hour except watch Lewis and fail to shoot a deer, and then the film asks him to do everything, and the fear on his face is not the sort actors usually bother with. Ned Beatty’s Bobby, soft and chatty, is the bravest performance in it. On the second day two mountain men, Bill McKinney and Herbert ‘Cowboy’ Coward, come out of the trees, and what follows is the reason for the 18 certificate. We were horrified, and we had seen it before. Boorman shoots it in flat daylight, without music and without cutting away to anything that would let us off, and that is why it has lasted where the gorier films that copied it have not. The trouble is the script. Lewis explains the film in the car on the way up, about machines failing and who will survive when they do, and explains it again by the fire, and the pictures had already said it. The haggling with the Griner brothers (Seamon Glass, Randall Deal) over who drives the cars is staged like a scene from a play about hill people, every line a warning. Some critics at the time thought the film exploited its violence rather than examined it. We think they are wrong. The last third is mostly men whispering on a riverbank about what they can live with, which is not how a film that enjoys violence spends its time, and by the end we were more afraid of the men we had come with than of anyone in the woods. Boorman had made *Point Blank* five years earlier, about a man walking through a city that has stopped seeing him, and this is the same idea turned inside out: men walking into a place that sees nothing else. We think it is his best film. It runs 109 minutes, which is as long as it needs to be. Watch it with the lights off and the phone in another room. Do not, whatever Lewis tells you, watch it the night before a canoeing holiday. *Fi1m score 85, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics rate Deliverance highly, and the praise settles on the same places: John Boorman’s direction, Vilmos Zsigmond’s photography of the river and its banks, and the rafting sequences themselves. The performances are praised almost everywhere. Most also read the film as an allegory, whether of masculinity under threat, of a wilderness already ruined by the civilisation that comes to visit it, or of the American middle-class male after Vietnam. The reservations gather around the script and the violence. Variety and Roger Ebert, both writing on the original release, argue the film exploits its brutality rather than examining it, and that its philosophising amounts to little. The New Yorker finds the story a simple collection of myths about manhood, a good yarn as long as nobody gets metaphysical about it. The spread is wide, from full marks to the middle, and it is largely the later reviews that are warmest. ### Reviews we read (12) - **Radio Times**, Andrew Collins (5/5): Beyond its shocking scenes, the film is a suspenseful thriller charting civilisation's erosion by nature and a metaphor for masculinity under threat. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-871th2/deliverance/) - **Empire**, Mark Dinning (90/100, inferred): The film is a boy's own adventure gone bad and a nightmarish vision of a land destroyed by civilisation. It resonates with chilling power thanks to its themes, performances and John Boorman's superb direction. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/deliverance-review/) - **Slant Magazine**, Jeremiah Kipp (90/100, inferred): Deliverance is a haunting masterpiece that taps into primal fears of the wilderness and violation, transforming its city-slicker protagonists through raw instinct and moral reckoning amid the river's dangers. The review singles out the masterful wide shots capturing the alien landscape, the charged close-ups, and the film's exploration of uncivilized impulses beneath civilized facades. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/deliverance-dvd/) - **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (A-): The film is about finding where ideas give way to instinct, as four Atlanta men confront a primal wilderness that exposes their vulnerabilities and forces adaptation or devolution. Boorman and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond observe the men's struggle against nature and hostile locals with patient, visceral detail, underscored by iconic sequences like the banjo duet. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/deliverance-1798203199) - **The New York Times**, Stephen Farber (90/100, inferred): Farber calls it the most stunning piece of moviemaking of the year, praising Boorman's kinesthetic power, visual subtlety, and the film's uncompromising adventure quality along with strong performances, while noting some schematic plotting. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1972/08/20/archives/deliverance-how-it-delivers-how-it-delivers.html) - **Time Out**, TM (80/100, inferred): The film moves from boys' own adventure with graphic violence to a haunting vision of a land already killed by civilisation, peopled by alien creatures. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/deliverance) - **The Guardian** (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as a cracking good story with strong narrative drive that also functions as a finely structured allegory about America. They single out the river-rafting sequences and psychological thriller elements for praise while noting some screenplay weaknesses in deepening the parable. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/28/deliverance-reviewed-finely-structured-allegory-about-america-1972) - **The New Yorker**, Penelope Gilliatt (70/100, inferred): Gilliatt describes it as strongly made with exquisite photography but finds the story a simple, banal ragbag of maleness myths and long-winded dialogue, calling it a fine yarn if not taken too metaphysically. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1972/08/05/tax-deductible-jesus) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (50/100, inferred): Ebert finds the film effective as simple adventure with strong performances and unfaked rapids footage, but criticizes it for failing to make any significant statement about its action and for exploiting violence in a fantasy rather than realistic way. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/deliverance-1972) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (50/100, inferred): The review sees it as a stark survival showdown but argues it exploits rather than explores violent drama through nihilistic philosophizing; it criticizes the script, direction, and some performances while noting the premise's potential. [Read](https://variety.com/1971/film/reviews/deliverance-1200422814/) - **Eye for Film**, Keith Hennessey Brown (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film brilliant as entertainment and as a critique of the white middle-class American male in the wake of Vietnam. It is singled out as the most shocking and disturbing mainstream American horror film of the 1970s for its refusal to provide easy answers to the moral questions it raises. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/deliverance-film-review-by-keith-hennessey-brown) - **Collider**, Andre Dellamorte (70/100, inferred): The critic describes Deliverance as a seminal 1970s film and a masterpiece of the tensions of masculinity, with its influence most evident on the horror genre. It praises the raw experience of the story and period authenticity but notes it is not a transcendent piece of art. [Read](https://collider.com/deliverance-blu-ray-review/) ## Details - **Director:** John Boorman - **Director:** John Boorman - **Screenplay:** James Dickey - **Novel:** James Dickey - **Cinematography:** Vilmos Zsigmond - **Editor:** Tom Priestley - **Producer:** John Boorman - **Cast:** Jon Voight as Ed Gentry; Burt Reynolds as Lewis Medlock; Ned Beatty as Bobby Trippe; Ronny Cox as Drew Ballinger; Ed Ramey as Old Man at the Gas-Station; Billy Redden as Lonnie - The Banjo Boy; Seamon Glass as First Griner; Randall Deal as Second Griner - **Runtime:** 1h 49m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 18 August 1972 - **Genres:** Drama, Adventure, Thriller - **Budget:** $2 million - **Box office:** $46 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuOUF1-4P3c ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: AR, AU, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, CZ, DK, EC, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, IN, IT, LT, MX, NL, NO, PA, PE, PT, RO, RS, SE. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1973: Best Director (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Straw Dogs* (1971): Peckinpah’s Cornish siege; the same year, the same question, a nastier answer - *Wake in Fright* (1971), Fi1m 86: A schoolteacher stranded in the Australian outback, where the hospitality is the horror — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/wake-in-fright.md) - *Southern Comfort* (1981), Fi1m 81: Walter Hill sends National Guardsmen into a Louisiana swamp; the locals object — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/southern-comfort.md) - *Aguirre, the Wrath of God* (1972), Fi1m 91: Herzog’s conquistadors raft down a river that does not want them either — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/aguirre-the-wrath-of-god.md) - *Winter's Bone* (2010), Fi1m 85: The Ozarks from the inside, with Jennifer Lawrence asking questions nobody will answer — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/winters-bone.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/deliverance