https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/

Deliverance (1972) is British director John Boorman's gripping, absorbing action-adventure film about four suburban Atlanta businessmen friends who encounter disaster in a summer weekend's river-canoeing trip. It was one of the first films with the theme of city-dwellers against the powerful forces of nature. The exciting box-office hit, most remembered for its inspired banjo duel and the brutal, violent action (and sodomy scene), was based on James Dickey's adaptation of his own 1970 best-selling novel (his first) of the same name - he contributed the screenplay and acted in a minor part as the town sheriff.

The stark, uncompromising film was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing), but went away Oscar-less. The beautifully-photographed film, shot entirely on location (in northern Georgia's Rabun County that is bisected by the Chattooga River), was the least-nominated film among the other Best Picture nominees. Ex-stuntman Burt Reynolds took the role of bow-and-arrow expert Lewis after it was turned down by James Stewart, Marlon Brando, and Henry Fonda on account of its on-location hazards.

The increasingly claustrophobic, downbeat film, shot in linear sequence along forty miles of a treacherous river, has been looked upon as a philosophical or mythical allegory of man's psychological and grueling physical journey against adversity. It came during the 70s decade when many other conspiracy or corruption-related films were made with misgivings, paranoia or questioning of various societal institutions or subject areas, such as the media (i.e., Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976)), politics (i.e., The Parallax View (1974), All the President's Men (1976)), science (i.e., Coma (1978), Capricorn One (1978), The China Syndrome (1979)), and various parts of the US itself (i.e., Race with the Devil (1975), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and later Southern Comfort (1981)).

A group of urban dwellers test their manhood and courage, totally vulnerable in the alien wild, and pit themselves against the hostile violence of nature. At times, however, they are attracted to nature, and exhilarated and joyful about their experiences in the wild. (Director Boorman pursued the same complex eco-message theme of man vs. nature in other films, including Zardoz (1973) and The Emerald Forest (1985).) As they progress further and further along in uncharted territory down the rapids, the men 'rape' the untouched, virginal wilderness as they are themselves violated by the pristine wilderness and its degenerate, inbred backwoods inhabitants. Survivalist skills come to the forefront when civilized standards of decency and logic fail.

The river is the potent personification of the complex, natural forces that propel men further and further along their paths. It tests their personal values, exhibiting the conflict between country and city, and accentuates what has been hidden or unrealized in civilized society. The adventurers vainly seek to be 'delivered' from the evil in their own hearts, and as in typical horror films, confront other-worldly forces in the deep woods. The flooding of the region after the completion of a dam construction project alludes to the purification and cleansing of the sins of the world by the Great Flood. The film was also interpreted as an allegory of the US' involvement in the Vietnam War - as the men (the US military) intruded into a foreign world (Southeast Asia), and found it was raped or confronted by wild forces it couldn't understand or control.