Rating: B-
Dir: John Boorman
Star: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox
I only vaguely remember watching this film the first time round, and so (and also because it was available) I thought to give it another outing. It’s well shot and the scenery is by turns simple and stunning. It’s also quite nicely put together. Neat, simple, untroubled, unhurried, slower than I remembered… which you can also read to mean that film meanders a bit, here and there.
The film is also a bit bi-polar. In the first half it is definitely a Burt Reynolds film, with him the pivot at every point and John Voight his countersunk counterpoint, and then, after the turning point, their roles reverse. There are a couple of others, taking key and leading roles as… erm… the other two… and they’re basically window dressing for plot-points.
The story (by James Dickey, who adapted it from his 1970 novel) is of four city folks, one being a survivalist-type, deciding to take a lazy canoe ride down and along the Cahulawassee River before it’s dammed and turned into a lake. Uncomfortable-to-wear rubber fetishist Lewis Medlock (Reynolds) takes his three friends along on the canoeing trip, and they all take their roles pretty well, both good and bad, as Ed Gentry (Voight’s character) tends to being a pain-in-the-ass. As for the other two. Well. They’re there.
After a bit of a banjo-fest the four set off and the early rapids scene is well done without stunt-men or insurance. So, these are the four actors riding white water, and the sense of camaraderie and joy (and relief) as they land is palpable. As (likely) is Reynolds pain later, after breaking his coccyx.
Anyhoo, whilst ‘heading down river to Aintree’, Gentry and padding #2 come across some locals and it is then that we discover that padding #2 Bobby Trippe (Beatty) has ‘…got a real pretty purdy mouth…’ and can squeal like a piggy. More violence ensues and our now rather bruised group head on, most definitely not leaving dead locals behind. Nope. No way. Honest guv…
‘Where’s the law Drew!?’
‘Put your life jacket on Drew!’
Oooh look. More rapids! Drew!! And calamity, with the neatest boat-splitting-in-two ever. And shouting. Lots of shouting. And no more Drew. Having decided that he was shot, albeit with zero evidence, paranoid insanity ensues. And more shouting.
‘Now you get to play the game…’ as they all question their mortality as nature roars and more locals come to die, and the symbolism gets a bit symbollocks as one-by-one they slaughter yet more folk, only finally to discover that Drew Baillinger (Cox) wasn’t shot. Whoops… erm… sorry about that everyone …left alive…
As for Drew, well ‘…he was the best of us…’ or ‘..I didn’t really know him..’, so let’s honour him by tying a large rock around another inconvenient corpse for dumping in the river, and then rapidly buggering off. Yeah. Classy!
Overall, it’s a well shot and very pretty film. It’s a cute tale, relating to much – masculinity, modernity, reality, brutal truths and morality and hypocrisy – and it’s neat enough, and as linear as the river. In summary, it never overstayed its welcome and I enjoyed it more than expected, and you might too.
‘Goodbye Ed. I don’t think I’ll see you for a while.’
Squee!
Phil’s score: Two beers, maybe three, and give your brain the night off.
Jim’s ancient review: Fancy a cinematic sandwich? For what we have here is 30 very intense minutes in the middle, surrounded by a lot of padding. Or perhaps more accurately, paddling, with the first section resembling a travelogue down the river for Voight, Reynolds (has he ever looked more like an Action Man?) and their suburbanite companions. Then the travelling stops, the music stops (to good effect) and some locals…well, “gonna make you squeal like a pig, boy” is the quote that sticks in my mind. I expected the rest of the film to maintain this ferocious level, and descend into near-continuous terror like The Hitcher or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it peters out with little more in the way of threat. Still, Voight does well as a mild-mannered man, forced to turn feral to survive, and two rampaging gay rednecks are more than enough to put me off the idea of a nice canoeing trip. C-