It is also a finely structured allegory about America and Americans. But at least it works properly on a more basic level. It’s good to watch, and then to think about.

| Sep 28, 2022

The movie casts a spell through images both ugly and beautiful, and other sounds, none of them really reflecting the idea of "nature in harmony." All here is dissonance, and the best one can do is find a thread of consolation within.

| Apr 9, 2019

Each of the four lead performances is exceptional, none more so than Burt Reynolds' beefy, supercilious Lewis.

| Aug 24, 2008

John Boorman's 1972 film of the James Dickey novel has a beautiful visual style that balances the film's machismo message.

| Sep 18, 2007

It's the stuff of which slapdash oaters and crime programmers are made but the obvious ambitions of Deliverance are supposed to be on a higher plane.

| Sep 18, 2007

This man-versus-nature story is also about man indulging his most uncivilized instincts, and in their various ways the four men on the canoe trip are transformed.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 27, 2007

It's a haunting, nightmarish vision.

| Jan 26, 2006

A fantasy about violence, not a realistic consideration of it.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 23, 2004

So many of Dickey's lumpy narrative ideas remain in his screenplay that John Boorman's screen version becomes a lot less interesting than it has any right to be.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 20, 2003

To this day, 'Dueling Banjoes' still gives me the willies.

| Mar 10, 2003

There's real substance in themes, performances and John Boorman's superb direction.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2000