Deliverance Challenges Our Belief in The System

Now son, WHO'S YO DADDY?

 "S   ir, it's Corporal Hicks sir." 

"What is it, Corporal?" replied the sergeant.

"Found another one—looks to be from the 21st century."

"It's got the signs?" 

"Sir, yes sir. Portable body scan confirms it sir. About thirty years old, cervical vertebrae one through five in a state of hyper-flexion, shortened extensor pollicis longus muscle on both thumbs, both from over-usage of the old telecommunications devices. She appears to be well dressed and her shoes are imprinted with "Jimmy Choo" on the heel, her tags say she was a lawyer of some sort—a definite believer in the System." "Okay, Corporal, I've heard enough, tag her and bag her, over and out."

Unfortunately, this is not an excerpt from the latest James Cameron movie depicting the downfall of man. As human beings and North Americans, we love and believe in the System. We go to school, educate ourselves, get jobs, make money, buy houses, pay taxes, have children and believe that we are protected and entitled to lead good lives because we have paid our dues and can now watch the hockey game with our feet up.

Over the last forty-three years, we have managed to pervert and abuse the system into a fossil-fuel-using, gluttonous, judgmental society that uses cell phones in a manner that begs for the old phrase in reference to masturbation, "Don't do that too much or you'll go blind."

When was the last time we gave a dollar to a toothless beggar when we were stopped at a traffic light? When was the last time we volunteered our time to help someone who did not own a $40,000 car? To say that we—the educated, the hardworking, the plasma-TV and iPhone-6-owning—think we are special is really an understatement.

What if a movie director and a writer were able to take that system that we believe in so much, and wrap it up and reshape it into a policeman's nightstick? What if they then took that nightstick and inserted it into everyone's rectum so far that it made them vomit? Would that change things?

In 1972, director John Boorman and writer James Dickey teamed up to make a movie about progress, the system, and the imminent death of a small town in the middle of the woods riddled with mountain men who know about as much about technology and city life as we know about how not to waste things like water.

When four businessmen set out on a canoe adventure to see a fictional Georgian river before it is engulfed by the construction of a dam, all in the name of progress, each of them quickly learns that judging a book by its cover and following the system may lead to, at the least, various orifices being violated, or at the very worst, death.

When virgin-like Bobby (Ned Beatty) first sees what appears to be an inbred young man holding a banjo, he doesn't think he can play it. Boy, was he wrong. When Ed (Jon Voight) has to do the unthinkable to survive, he quickly learns that his sophisticated negotiation skills are no match for a toothless cracker hell-bent on using Angelina Jolie's father's mouth for something other than target practice.

When Drew (Ronny Cox, the head villain in 1987's Robocop) realizes that city laws do not apply in the woods he quickly falls victim to the theory Darwin referred to as "survival of the fittest."

Even Lewis (Burt Reynolds) who is both macho and cynical and has his doubts about the "system" is quickly put to the test as to what he will do in order to survive.

Forget The Walking Dead, The Terminator, the Mad Max series and just about every other apocalyptic movie you've ever seen. The way we are living, right now in 2015, we will be the cause of the downfall of Man.

It won't be a virus or a radioactive war, it will be because we have raped this planet of ours and turned it into one giant cellphone.

Perhaps we need to be violated to change our ways. We certainly don't listen to environmentalists or politicians or the few savvy youth of our seemingly doomed generation but, I dare anyone who watches this film not to be shocked into submission and a state of change after viewing one of the most unforgettable rape scenes in movie history that makes this film even more of a masterpiece than it was 43 years ago.