Product Description

What Did Happen On The Cahulawassee River?Four ordinary men in two canoes navigated a river they only know as a line on a map taking on a wilderness they only think they understand.Deliverence based by James Dickey on his novel surges with the urgency of masterful storytelling like Georgia's Chattooga River along which it was shot. Equally masterful is the portrayal of each man's change of character under stress harrowingly enacted by award winners Jon Voight Burt Reynolds Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox. Director John Boorman sets us on the knife-edge of survival - and draws us in with the irresistable force of a raging current.System Requirements:Running Time: 109 MinsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 085391165125 Manufacturer No: 116512

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2452 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-09-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 109 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
One of the key films of the 1970s, John Boorman's Deliverance is a nightmarish adaptation of poet-novelist James Dickey's book about various kinds of survival in modern America. The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen of various male stripe: Jon Voight's character is a reflective, civilized fellow, Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes, Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighborly type. Together they decide to answer the ancient call of men testing themselves against the elements and set out on a treacherous ride on the rapids of an Appalachian river. What they don't understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey's variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. In short order, the four men dig deep into their own suppressed primitiveness, defending themselves against armed cretins, facing the shock of real death on their carefully planned, death-defying adventure, and then squarely facing the suspicions of authority over their concealed actions. Boorman, a master teller of stories about individuals on peculiarly mythical journeys, does a terrifying and beautiful job of revealing the complexity of private and collective character--the way one can never be the same after glimpsing the sharp-clawed survivor in one's soul. --Tom Keogh

Amazon.com
One of the key films of the 1970s, John Boorman's Deliverance is a nightmarish adaptation of poet-novelist James Dickey's book about various kinds of survival in modern America. The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen of various male stripe: Jon Voight's character is a reflective, civilized fellow, Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes, Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighborly type. Together they decide to answer the ancient call of men testing themselves against the elements and set out on a treacherous ride on the rapids of an Appalachian river. What they don't understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey's variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. In short order, the four men dig deep into their own suppressed primitiveness, defending themselves against armed cretins, facing the shock of real death on their carefully planned, death-defying adventure, and then squarely facing the suspicions of authority over their concealed actions. Boorman, a master teller of stories about individuals on peculiarly mythical journeys, does a terrifying and beautiful job of revealing the complexity of private and collective character--the way one can never be the same after glimpsing the sharp-clawed survivor in one's soul. --Tom Keogh

On the DVD
The single-disc deluxe edition of Deliverance has plenty to recommend it over the previously released DVD. In addition to an improved transfer, director John Boorman recorded a full-length commentary track in which he explains how he shot the famous "Duelling Banjos" scene when the boy didn't know how to play the banjo, how he was instructed to use unknown actors and came up with Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, and how he persuaded Jon Voight to do the picture when the actor was going through a difficult time ("he told me I saved his life, , then spent three months trying to kill him"). A 2007 55-minute documentary is split into four parts: The Beginning, The Journey, Betraying the River (focusing on the "squeal like a pig" scene), and Delivered. Voight, Cox, Beatty, Burt Reynolds, and Boorman all participate, as do director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond and "mountain man" Bill McKinney. Christopher Dickey, son of the author of the original novel, James Dickey, also recounts his father's experiences with the film and how he eventually had to be asked to leave the set. Included from the original DVD are the theatrical trailer and the vintage documentary "The Dangerous World of Deliverance," which is an interesting contrast to the other bonus material because of its use of behind-the-scenes footage (rather than stills) and showing Dickey working at his university. --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

Only 30 years late in seeing this movie
I think I'm one of the only baby boomers who hasn't seen this movie. Not a bad movie considering the technology available at the time.

Dull and overrated
New on the Fox Network: When Good Movies Go Bad!
Or, a review of John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance, which he produced and directed, based upon James Dickey's 1970 novel of the same name. Dickey also wrote the screenplay, which explains a lot, especially if you are familiar with his `poetry.' The actual look of the film, however, is sensational. The cinematography of nature, by Vilmos Zsigmond, is still stunning after thirty-five years- especially those scenes shot in twilight, dusk, and night, and the first forty-five or so minutes sets the basis of a good tale which could have been something really special. Then, Dickey digs into his own personal bag of fetishes (his most famous poem is The Sheep Child, about bestiality) and latencies and the film becomes an almost nonstop stream of a narrative propelled by the Dumbest Possible Action theory of film.
Although the coinage of that term arrived a few years later than this film, Deliverance is as fine an example of that genre as there is. The term arrived in the early 1980s, when a spate of slasher films from the Halloween to the Nightmare On Elm Street to the Friday The 13th series, to their even cheaper knockoffs, were always dependent upon the early success of their villains stemming from the utter stupidity of their victims, to wit: big breasted cheerleader is alone in a dark house, hears a scream from down an even darker hallway, yet rushes headlong toward the scream, all the while knowing that a serial killer is lurking about. In similar fashion, this film goes from a realistic portrayal of masculine mores to a silly, unrealistic, A to B to C pointless film. The turning point comes when one of the four male leads is sodomized forcefully by a hillbilly and his toothless gun-toting crony.... the film finally founders because it lacks real situations, characters, and philosophy. After all, it's difficult to get truly philosophic after a character's been torpedoed by a hillbilly, and so a film that could have been a realistic and philosophic exploration of characters, and male character, devolves into a ridiculous melodrama of revenge, deceit, and perversion. Boorman is a noted filmmaker, but he's never been considered one of the great auteurs, and a film like Deliverance shows why. Some have accused me of gleeing in bad art. I don't. But needling the bad is a palliative over the depression bad art brings. This is especially true when a work of art could have been good, even great, but actively chooses to demean itself and its audience. This film proves that while James Dickey's body died in 1997, something far more essential died long before, or was never birthed; and in that I'm not talking about anything to do with morality. When you've figured out what that was, you'll understand Deliverance a whole lot better.

Item never received.
This item was ordered over 4 weeks ago and was never received. I have emailed the seller twice and am yet to receive the movie.