Director John Boorman's adaptation of James Dickey's best-selling novel stars Burt Reynolds as the hypermasculine Lewis Medlock. Obsessed with Hemingway-vintage notions about achieving true masculinity by challenging nature, Lewis cajoles three of his friends, Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty), Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox), and Ed Gentry (Jon Voight), into joining him on a white-water canoe trip down an uncharted river in the Appalachians, although only Ed has had any similar experience. The locals that Lewis hires to drive their cars downstream warn him about the difficulty of the journey, but this only makes him more eager to start. The first day goes smoothly as the men learn how to shoot the rapids, and all are exhilarated. On the second day, Ed and Bobby become separated from the other two and reach the landing point ahead of them. Two hillbillies suddenly appear from the forest and decide to hold the two men at gunpoint as the trip begins its tragic downward spiral. Reynolds has one of the best roles of his career in this compelling meditation on the costs of masculine ritual; the film boasts a superb cast as well as the subtle camerawork of the great Vilmos Zsigmond.
Highly original and suspense charged film about the macabre events which befall four city men out on a short canoeing holiday.