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Deliverance

Deliverance

List Price: $14.96
Your Price: $11.22
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Movie and a Great DVD
Review: Quite simply an outstanding film. See this movie.

The previous reviewer is incorrect. The movie IS "enhanced for 16x9 televisions." I think he just needs to flip the disc over because the other side is full-frame. Or maybe his dvd player and/or television is not set on the correct mode for viewing an anamorphic DVD. I don't know.

The DVD is anamorphic and the soundtrack is wonderful in a new 5.1 mix. Highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Deliverance is excellent.
Review: This movie is a WB "Classic", but a classic for those with strong stomachs. More tellingly, the rape sequence is what you need the guts for: this "ultraviolent" movie has a remarkably limited amount of murder in it. However, the possibility of danger and intensity lurks around every turn, therefore this is not a film for kids. Humiliation, rather than terror, is the emotion that villians McKinney and Coward generate. This film is appropriately rated R for violence, profanity to the midpoint, and a gruesome rape scene (but not actually a "sex" scene).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Warning! This DVD is NOT the perfect "Deliverance" release!
Review: Living in Europe, I decided to buy this US edition of one of my two favorite films ever (the second one being "Manhunter"), because I was thrilled to see all the extra features present in it (which are absent in the European DVD). When the package arrived, I took the disc out, thinking I would see the perfect edition of "Deliverance"... but I didn't. All the extras are there, and they're wonderful, the picture and sound quality are excellent. So what's wrong? What spoils the pleasure? Apparently, a single decision of some halfwit Warner executive with two-digit IQ. This person, whoever s/he was, decided to cut and distort this thrilling movie, bastardizing it from the original widescreen format (which all DVDs should be in) to an awful, unbearable to watch Pan-Scan, with about 15% of the picture lost! Yes, the movie was damaged and squeezed - assaulted and raped, if you will - because some brain damaged person responsible for issuing the DVD thought someone would prefer the censored Pan-Scan version to the original, full, widescreen one. The box tries to use some tangled semantics in order to cheat the buyer into believing that there is a possibility to switch between the damaged Pan-Scan version and the real widescreen one - which, of course, is not true at all. Only the distorted, cut version is present on the DVD...

I am not saying that this disc is not worth buying - far from that, I'm extremely satisfied with all the extras and featurettes (the European version only has a bare menu and the movie itself). Nevertheless, I still feel cheated since I was naturally assuming I would be getting a widescreen version (after all, it's a DVD release). This is why I'm only giving this release three stars (of course, the movie itself deserves the full five stars and much more). I suppose I will still have to buy the European version (which is in widescreen) and when I choose to watch the extras, I will play the American disc, but when I feel like watching the movie itself - I will take the European release.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Appalling
Review: "Deliverance" is, without question, one of the most appalling films ever made and has done more damage to the southern Appalachians than any coal company or other destroying of the natural environment.

At issue here is the flagrant stereotypes that the movies have perpetuated against the people of the region for years. "Deliverance" not only continues these stereotypes, but extends them in such a way that their impact can be felt nearly 30 years later. Today much of the southern Appalachians have been overrun with explosive growth brought on by the areas natural beauty and mountain vistas. This growth, while bringing some benefits to the region have caused the natives of the region to suffer under the crushing burden of an escalating cost of living as the wealthy migrants drive up property values and other factors. But why care about the people who are being displaced when, as portrayed in "Deliverance," they are only sub human.

If any minority group were portrayed in the appalling manner that the good people of the southern Appalachians are in this film, the PC police would be out in force in protest, and rightfully so. I guess some stereotypes are more PC friendly than others.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: noooo
Review: i got this as one of my free dvds from columbia house a part of my into package and am going to be giving it to the pawn shop. movie wasnt too bad actually pretty decent until the great climax of horror that no other man should have to see with his own eyes neither be owned or played on my tv. it left me dissappointed and wishing i never saw it. but i wont ruin it for you if you wanna know go ask someone.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Da-na-nang-nang-nang! Da-na-nang-nang-nang!
Review: This is the kind of thing that gets five-star reviews across the board. It's also one of the most '70s' films I know, being grim, realistic, environmentally-conscious and much too extreme and unusual to be made today, at least not by a major studio. It made a pre-moustache Burt Reynolds a star (this is his finest role - his character is just slightly too intense too be likeable) and gave John Boorman carte blanche to do the utterly bizarre 'Zardoz'. In common with Boorman's other films, it looks fantastic, and the soundtrack is justly famous, especially considering that there really isn't much of it - most of the film has no music at all, like 'Catch 22'. Plot-wise, it's like a twisted version of the old Spencer Tracy film 'Bad Day at Black Rock', in that a bunch of 'civilised' people arrive in a hostile environment and find themselves in mortal danger. Although it was very influential - 'Southern Comfort' and 'Apocalypse Now' are very similar - and the backwoods primitives became a cliche, it's almost uniquely savage, and almost documentary-like in its editorial distance. The main characters are likeable enough, but you get the impression that Boorman and Dickey felt more sympathy for the landscape than the people. It's nice to see a film in which actual animals are really killed, too. You don't get that nowadays. It's odd seeing Ronny Cox from Robocop playing a smiling guitar player, too.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Old South Meets the New South
Review: Four suburban guys from early 70's Atlanta venture into the backwoods. Three come out - none are the same as when they went in.

Burt Reynold's character convinces some friends that they need to ride down a river that is being damned, because it is their last chance to do so. In today's America it is difficult to imagine any navigable river in the continental US that isn't overrun with canoers, kayakers and other boaters, let alone one within easy driving from Atlanta, but appearantly thirty years ago things were different. Surely people have been canoeing and fishing recreationally for longer than that, haven't they?

At any rate this seems like a strange idea, both to his friends and to the rural people they encounter along their way. The Reynold's character perseveres and after some early scenes of backwoods happiness, the group finds they are unprepared for the violence of both the river and the locals. Things go from bad to worse and Jon Voight's character is forced to find strengths he never knew he had to save himself and the remainder of the group.

Although I think Dickey was primarily trying to make a rather conventional point about the reserves which are present in (some) of us when presented with adversity, I think the more interesting theme is the intersection of the new South with the old South. Dixie was just coming out of it's 100 year stupor following the end of the civil war, freed by the success of the civil rights movement, and was rapidly modernizing and becoming what we think of as modern America. People were pouring in from the North. Of course many of the old Southerners were still there and this interaction is pretty interesting.

I gave the movie five stars because the performances, especially by Voight and Reynolds, are fantastic, the action is gripping and engaging from beginning to end, and because of the classic dualing banjos scene. To me, it's worth buying the DVD for that scene alone, because it is a quintessential piece of American cinema.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The ride of your life
Review: What a film! Every single actor is superb. This certainly has to be Burt Reynolds' finest moment - I don't think anybody could have played his part any better. As you are drawn into the story, you'll find yourself looking to him for strength and answers, just as the other characters do, and wondering if you're up to the test, just as Jon Voight does. The masterful soundtrack ranges from the languid to the frenetic - like the river itself. This film contains some of the tensest moments in moviedom, but the last section slows down to a Southern drawl that barely feels much-removed from the danger and horror of the wilds.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: REAL WIDESCREEN- OUTSTANDING TRANSFER
Review: I was too young to see Deliverance in a theatre when it first came out. I saw it several times either on VHS or on television throughout the years. I guess I was used to seeing the chopped off and grainy version!! I just picked up the DVD and WOW!! I can't believe how well this movie is cleaned up. Seeing Deliverance on DVD is almost like seeing a completely different movie- as far as picture and sound quality.

The story itself is one of the best as far as suspense. Deliverence was adapted from the James Dickey novel of the same name. In fact, Dickey himself has a small part in this movie as the Sheriff. I have read the book and this movie does justice to it.

Deliverance is another example of "a classic among classics" It's great that it's on DVD. It's great that it's in a "real" widescreen format with an outstanding digital transfer. There are also some really cool extras on the DVD such as the original trailer. Glad to see that this classic was "taken care of". The best justice to this classic!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dueling conscience
Review: The best thrillers are the ones that draw you in by appealing to your basic humanity and then proposing a genuine moral dilemma. (See "Blue Velvet" and also the first scene of, believe it or not, "When a Stranger Calls Back.") This movie presents a dandy of a dilemma, following the death of a mountain man by an otherwise civilized city slicker. The whole "what would you do" quandary is what really keeps us glued to the end, although the acting isn't too shabby, either.

(P.S. Viewers here have mentioned the frightening ending. For me, fear is also palpable in the one moment when Voight is underwater.)


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