Deliverance

Four friends (Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty & Ronny Cox) set out on a canoe trip down a river in a remote part of Georgia. The whole area is shortly to be flooded as part of a hydroelectric project and this is a last chance to see this piece of unspoilt American wilderness.

No good will come of this.

CW: rape, injury detail, suicide (maybe)

John Boorman's tentpole thriller is sparse. Not a great deal happens, it's something like 6-8 key scenes but it never drags and those scenes hit like a punch.

It's the early 70s but here shown on-screen is the 'action man' character failing and having to be rescued, the 'nice' character having to become hardened and clearly being lesser for it, a humiliating sexual assault played out at length and what could be interpreted as a suicide.

None of them will ever be the same again.

One of the great pieces of 70s cinema, 9/10.