Burt Reynolds' 'best film' lost the Oscar to 'The Godfather' — 54 years on it still holds 90% on Rotten Tomatoes
Deliverance (1972) anniversary: Burt Reynolds' breakout film, its 90% Rotten Tomatoes score, $46 million box office on a $2 million budget, and its Best Picture loss to The Godfather.
There is no shame in losing to Coppola. There is, however, a strong case that "Deliverance" would have won in almost any other year.
Imagine making the scariest canoe trip in cinema history, launching Burt Reynolds as an actual movie star, earning twenty-three times your budget, and then watching Marlon Brando's cotton-stuffed cheeks take home Best Picture. That was 1972. That was "Deliverance."
As Yahoo Entertainment noted on its anniversary this week, the John Boorman thriller hit theaters on August 18, 1972. Fifty-four years later it's still sitting at a 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, still ranked as one of Reynolds' three highest-rated films, and still the movie he personally called the "best film I've ever been in." And this is a man who made "Boogie Nights."
The plot, for the three people who haven't seen it
Four Atlanta businessmen decide to canoe down a river in North Georgia before a dam floods the valley. Reynolds plays Lewis Medlock, the alpha of the group, a bow-hunting survivalist who treats the wilderness like a personal gym. Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox round out the crew.
Then the trip goes sideways. Then it goes sideways again. The rest you'll have to watch yourself, preferably not right before a camping trip.
The numbers, because they're absurd
- Budget: about $2 million
- Domestic box office: over $46 million, per The Numbers
- Oscar nominations: three, including Best Picture
- Oscar wins: zero
- Rotten Tomatoes: 90%
- IMDb: 7.6/10
"Deliverance" made back its budget roughly 23 times over and got a Best Picture nomination for its trouble. It just happened to do this in the same year as the most beloved gangster movie ever made.
About that Oscar night
At the 45th Academy Awards, "Deliverance" was up against "The Godfather." There is no universe in which "The Godfather" loses Best Picture. Coppola's film is the thing every other film gets compared to; it's the answer when someone asks "name a perfect movie" at a party where nobody wants to argue.
So "Deliverance" went home empty-handed, which sounds like a snub until you remember that losing to "The Godfather" is the cinematic equivalent of losing a footrace to a cheetah. Nobody's mad. Everyone understands.
Why it's still the Burt Reynolds movie
Before "Deliverance," Reynolds was a TV guy — "Gunsmoke," a couple of his own series, a reliable jaw for hire. After it, he was the biggest star in the world for about a decade, the guy who could do "Smokey and the Bandit" and "The Longest Yard" and a Cosmopolitan centerfold and still be taken seriously. "Deliverance" is the hinge. It's where the mustache became a franchise.
Per Rotten Tomatoes' rankings, only "Boogie Nights" (91%) and the documentary "Burt Reynolds: The Last Interview" (95% audience score) rate higher in his filmography. One of those is a documentary about him and the other is the one where he played a porn director with a heart of gold. For a film where he mostly wears a wetsuit vest and holds a bow, "Deliverance" is doing remarkably well.
The best film Burt Reynolds ever made features a man who thinks he's invincible finding out, over roughly ninety minutes, that he is not. It's a career-defining role in a way nobody could have planned.
Watch it again
If it's been a while, it holds up. The rapids are real, the dread is real, the banjo scene is still the most effective piece of foreshadowing ever performed by a child. Fifty-four years later, it's the rare film that doesn't need a remake, a reboot, or a prestige series adaptation. Just a river and four men who should have stayed home.
