Rating: 2.5/5
Hooptober 8.0 | 21/34 | Set in the Woods
You know what's going to happen? They're gonna rape this whole goddamn landscape. They're gonna rape it.
Four men decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee River one last time before it’s dammed and the entire valley floods.
They are total jackasses to the locals, acting superior — especially Lewis (Burt Reynolds). Bobby (Ned Beatty) passively follows Lewis’ lead, but you can tell he’s worried.
Ed (Jon Voight) is friends with Lewis and is the point of contact between Lewis and the others. On the surface, Ed questions why he goes on the trip. But we know. The connection between them is clear. Ed may not believe Lewis’s bullshit, but he loves it. He doesn’t understand why he loves it but follows it down into the abyss.
Drew (Ronny Cox) pulls his guitar out and plays a song. A boy on the porch plays along with him on his banjo. They switch off phrases with each other.
The camera gawks at the banjo-playing boy. It also sneaks a peak into someone’s door so we can see the physically disabled child and assume inbreeding.
They visit a nearby family to inquire about driving their cars to the river’s end for canoeing. Lewis is a dick to them, too.
On day one, Bobby rides with Lewis. Drew rides with Ed because he sees through Lewis’s act and wants no part in it.
Lewis carries a bow-and-arrow with him to add to his perceived bravura. He wears a scuba vest that looks weird.
Lewis berates Bobby, treating him like shit the entire ride down. Bobby swallows it so he can be part of the gang.
Ed takes Lewis’ bow to shoot a deer the following morning. His nerves shake, and he misses. Drew and Bobby can’t understand why you’d want to kill an innocent animal.
Lewis is tired of Bobby, so Lewis tells Ed to take him in his canoe. Lewis and Drew are further back. Ed and Bobby stop on the side of the river to wait for them. In the woods, they see a couple of locals. One of them is carrying a shotgun.
Ed and Bobby don Southern accents and tell the locals they’re canoeing to Aintry. Locals inform them that the river doesn’t go that way, suggesting they are lost. And with Lewis guiding them, that’s a strong possibility.
Bobby, trying to be amicable, says that maybe they are. He tries to put on Lewis’s peacocking, but it doesn’t fit him.
The locals strap Ed by the neck to a tree.
They tell Bobby to strip naked. He tries to run away, but they pin him down and make him squeal like a pig. Then, they rape Bobby.
Ed sees Lewis and Drew coming down the river. Lewis sneaks up and shoots the rapist with an arrow. The other man drops his shotgun and runs into the woods.
The men debate their actions. Lewis has killed someone, a local. Would the local police side with them if they sought their help? And with what happened to Bobby, he wouldn’t want it getting around, regardless.
Burt Reynolds is perfectly hateable. The audience is ready for his humbling within seconds of Lewis being on screen.
Jon Voight is amazing. He has the most complex characterization of anyone, so watching his struggle and where he lands is satisfying, even when his choices are disappointing.
Finishing this movie took me forever. I haven’t seen this movie, but it’s in the cultural consciousness. I used to work for a rafting company, booking tours in the main office. We’d give the visitors a map of how to get to the river. Part of our routine was to tell them the directions, which included, “If you hear banjos, you’ve gone too far.” No one didn’t get the “joke.”
Also, no rafting company would let first-timers go down the Cahulawassee. Nor would they rent a canoe to anyone to go down it.
It’s the cultural shock of witnessing a man raped in a mainstream movie that gave this movie its staying power. This movie has little to offer the contemporary audience, especially after the inciting incident. The story’s setup leads to what comes next.
And it’s pretty tedious.
I don’t hate this movie. It has just lost its luster.