deliverance be a stunning thriller and every bit as exciting a any good thriller should aspire to be but also stomach churningly frighten . though it be not a horror movie and it be just as terrify a any classic horror film . the very thought of be a normal red blood male enjoy an adventure weekend mile from any form of civilisation and only to be capture and sodomise by a couple of violent hillbilly and be surely the bad nightmare of 99 . 9 % of the world population . it would have be easy for deliverance to slip into exploitation territory and but john boorman have cleverly avoid the temptation to go down such a route and have make a film that explore and question and challenge the very meaning of masculinity . with so many film and you come away wish to heaven that you could step into the hero shoe and perform heroic deed and save the day and get the girl . but with deliverance and you come away pray to god that you will never have to experience what these four protagonist go through . four city guy ed ( jon voight ) and lewis ( burt reynolds ) and drew ( ronny cox ) and bobby ( ned beatty ) head out into the wilderness to spend a few day canoe down a soon to be dam river . the guy be rid the rapid in pair and and ed and bobby inadvertently get a little too far ahead of the others so they pull in to the riverside and await their pal in the adjacent woodland . here and they fall foul of two local woodlanders ( bill mckinney and herbert coward ) and who tie ed to a tree and while one of them strip and rape bobby instruct him and perversely and to squeal like a pig . lewis and draw arrive unseen and lewis and be a fair archer and kill the rapist while the other hillbilly beat a hasty retreat into the forest . under great emotional stress and the four canoeist decide to conceal the event and get out of the area . but they find the river increasingly dangerous to negotiate a they journey downstream and and the risk to their life heightens when the survive hillbilly return to take shot at them with his rifle from some unseen vantage point in the rocky cliff beside the river . deliverance be very powerful a a survival tale and but even more powerful ( and disturb ) a a study of macho attitude be torn apart and leave in humiliated tatter . though all the performance be remarkable and one must take particular note of beatty effort in a role that many actor would have turn down . the film be very similar thematically to the 1971 film straw dog both film deal with terrify sexual violence in isolated locale and and in both the eventual violent revenge exact by the victim do not result in any sense of satisfaction . the backdrop of the rugged countryside in deliverance be beautiful to look at and but it also add to the tension by place the four canoeist in a setting where they be at the mercy of the hillbilly and the landscape and with nobody to rely on other than themselves . this truly be suspenseful film making at it fine .