  deliverance is a 1972 american dramatic thriller film produced and directed by john boorman and starring jon voight, burt reynolds, ned beatty, and ronny cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. the film is based on the 1970 novel of the same name by american author james dickey, who has a small role in the film as the sheriff. the screenplay was written by dickey and an uncredited boorman. widely acclaimed as a landmark picture, the film is noted both for the memorable music scene near the beginning, with one of the city men duelling on guitar with a strange country boy playing banjo, that sets the tone for what lies aheadâa trip into unknown and potentially dangerous territoryâand for its notorious male rape scene. in 2008, deliverance was selected for preservation in the united states national film registry by the library of congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". ==plot== four atlanta businessmen, lewis medlock (burt reynolds), ed gentry (jon voight), bobby trippe (ned beatty), and drew ballinger (ronny cox), decide to canoe down a river in the remote northern georgia wilderness, expecting to have fun and see the glory of nature before the fictional cahulawassee river valley is flooded by construction of a dam. lewis, an experienced outdoorsman, is the leader. ed is also a veteran of several trips but lacks lewis' machismo. bobby and drew are novices. traveling in pairs, the foursome's two canoes are briefly separated. the occupants of one canoe (bobby and ed) encounter a pair of grizzled mountain men emerging from woods, one wielding a shotgun. bobby is forced at gunpoint to strip naked, his ear twisted to bring him to his hands and knees, and then ordered to "squeal like a pig" before being brutally raped while ed is bound to a tree and held at gunpoint by the other man. hearing the commotion, lewis sec
1970s_LGBT-related_films 1970s_adventure_films 1970s_drama_films 1970s_thriller_films 1972_films American_adventure_drama_films American_films American_thriller_films English-language_films Films_based_on_novels Films_directed_by_John_Boorman Films_set_in_Appalachia Films_set_in_Atlanta,_Georgia Films_set_in_Georgia_(U.S._state) Films_set_in_forests Films_shot_in_Georgia_(U.S._state) Films_shot_in_North_Carolina Films_shot_in_South_Carolina Rape_and_revenge_films Southern_Gothic_films Southern_United_States_in_fiction United_States_National_Film_Registry_films Warner_Bros._films Whitewater_films