“You don’t beat it. You don’t beat this river,” says Lewis, portrayed by Burt Reynolds, after canoeing the exhaustive rapids of the Cahulawassee River. Indeed, Lewis does not beat the river, but to his credit, he did not anticipate being hunted by hillbillies when he embarked on a trip with three of his buddies. Deliverance, directed by John Boorman (Point Blank), differs from its 70’s thriller counterparts (The French Connection, Chinatown, The Conversation) in its simple narrative and singular setting (the river). Even though it contains classist stereotypes, it can go toe to toe with any of these movies with its beautiful portrayal of the natural beauty of Southeast Georgia in a story that never takes its foot off the gas pedal.

When Ed (Jon Voight), Lewis, Bobby (Ned Beatty), and Drew (Ronny Cox) rent canoes from a group of, for lack of a better word, white trash, the vacationers’ condescension toward the poor whites is immediately evident. When Ed tells his friends not to insult the local people, Bobby scoffs and declares, “People? What people?” The group openly mocks the Appalachian locals’ dress and intelligence. The hillbillies’ disdain for the suburbanites is augmented by the fact that the river and their towns will soon be destroyed in order to construct a dam for the electricity needs of Atlantians. Ed, a painfully normal married man, and his crew seem none the wiser of their immediate notoriety as they begin their journey.

The canoe trip takes a shocking turn when Ed and Bobby take a break on the bank of the river and are confronted by two local men with a gun. One of the men rapes Bobby, but is killed with a bow-and-arrow by Lewis before he is able to assault Ed. After this horrific event, the quad begins an exciting, Mad Max-like frenzy to reach their final destination in order to escape an attack from the other hillbilly that assaulted Lewis.

However, Deliverance’s portrayal of the Appalachian locals furthers some harmful stereotypes. On one hand, the movie clearly condemns the arrogant taunts of Ed’s friends towards the local people. But, the film also depicts the people that inhabit the backwoods of Georgia as inbred, unintelligent, and amoral. Deliverance initially garners a sense of sympathy for the displaced people that suffer on the wrong side of modernization, but this is completely revoked in the appalling rape of Drew. This story does not leave the audience pitying the local people that are on the verge of being displaced, but does a good job further entrenching distasteful preconceived notions about impoverished southerners.

After Lewis murders the first hillbilly, Drew continues to insist that they report the assault and murder to the authorities. Lewis vehemently disagrees, and points to Georgia wilderness and declares, “What law? Where is the law, Drew?”  The group decides to not report the sexual assault to the police because they fear the jury of local people would not view them favorably. At the expense of stereotyping poor sections of the south as lawless, Boorman creates a free-for-fall. The movie turns into a chess match between the hillbilly that knows the lay of land against three panicked suburban dads.

The other gun-wielding man murders Drew in his canoe, causing a crash that severely injures Lewis’ leg. Boorman turns the once-quaint Cahulawassee River into a monster, with gushing streams that drown out dialogue in a ten-minute retreat from their attacker. At the beginning of the film, the river is framed as an exquisite, relaxing expanse far away from the tribulations of suburban life. As they retreat, it seems more like a prison for Ed and his buddies, with towering rocks guarding each side of the Cahulawassee. Nature and its native inhabitants appear to be collectively hunting the greedy bourgeois for eradicating their home in order to get more effective air conditioning.

After Drew’s death, Ed feels that he must become a hunter, lest he meet the same fate as Drew. The only way to beat the hillbillies is to consort to their primitive state and beat them at their own game. Although the movie denigrates the locals as “primitive,” it lends for a compelling internal battle for the Ed. On the outskirts of civilization, he must toss aside his notions of law and order and revert to his primal instincts in order to stay alive.

Ed’s search for and standoff with the murderous hillbilly is a ten-minute sequence that uses sound exceptionally. Even though the only noises the audience can hear for this long period are the rush of the river and Ed’s grunts, the intrigue grows as Ed climbs a rocky slope to aim his bow and arrow at his enemy. When Ed prepares to release the bow and arrow and kill his enemy, the tension builds for what seems to be a forever as the audience hears him whisper  “release” and breathe heavily for a full thirty seconds. In this way, Deliverance uses unconventional tactics in order to build tension. While The French Connection has sublime car chases and shoot-em-up sequences, Boorman is able keep the viewer engaged in a simple scene in which a man climbs a rock and kills a man with fantastic acting and a thrilling build-up without dialogue.

The manner in which three of the four friends survive this dilemma is marked by considerable moral ambiguity. As an audience, we are faced with similar moral ambiguity in evaluating this film. Is the depiction of these poor southerner’s classist? Definitely. It is undeniable that this successful film’s illustration of the poor white south as a lawless, savage land did harm to that particular community. This is important to acknowledge. However, the hillbilly antagonists are frightening, elusive, and build incredible suspense. Additionally, Jon Voight’s magnificent transformation from a well-mannered city boy to a cold-blooded killer is stark and captivating. Ed never loses his humanity, even when he resorts to killing a man. His bow and arrow kill comes after a long period of contemplation in which he shakes violently in his state of vacillation. His character never stops being relatable, which keeps the audience engaged during the mayhem of the second half of the film. Deliverance is one of the best thrillers of this decade, but that excellence comes at a price.