Deliverance

The ultimate odyssey into the untamed wilderness of the supposedly civilized heart, John Boorman’s shock to the pop-culture consciousness follows four friends from Atlanta—played by Burt Reynolds (in his breakthrough role), Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox—on a weekend canoeing trip in rural Georgia. What they encounter there—startling, brutal, and unforgettable—has unsettled viewers for more than fifty years. Shooting on location in Appalachia to achieve scenes of almost mythic resonance (including the iconic dueling-banjos sequence), Boorman constructs one of the most harrowing survival thrillers ever made and a potent, daringly ambiguous deconstruction of masculinity on the edge.