Deliverance recap

Atlanta art director Ed Gentry joins his formidable friend Lewis Medlock and acquaintances Bobby Trippe and Drew Ballinger on a canoe trip down a wild Georgia river soon to be dammed. The expedition turns violent when two local men capture Ed and Bobby and assault Bobby; Lewis kills one with an arrow, while the other escapes. Soon afterward Drew falls from his canoe and Lewis is badly injured in a rapid. Believing the surviving attacker is shooting from above the gorge, Ed climbs the cliff, kills a man with an arrow, and hides the body. The group recovers Drew's body, sinks it to preserve their cover story, and struggles to Aintry. A suspicious sheriff cannot prove that their account of an accident is false and releases them. Ed returns to his family and work changed by what he did, Lewis recovers with reduced physical power, and Bobby breaks off contact. When the dam floods the valley, the bodies and evidence disappear beneath the new lake.

Ed Gentry lives a comfortable Atlanta life with his wife Martha, their son, and a successful but unfulfilling job in advertising. His friend Lewis Medlock pursues physical discipline and readiness with an intensity Ed admires. Lewis proposes that Ed, Bobby Trippe, and Drew Ballinger join him in canoeing the Cahulawassee, a remote river whose valley will soon be flooded by a dam. To Lewis, the trip is a final chance to experience the landscape and test themselves before it disappears. Ed agrees partly out of friendship and partly from dissatisfaction with the passivity of his normal life. Bobby and Drew have less experience, but Lewis's certainty carries the plan forward. The four prepare to leave the city for the north Georgia mountains, where their assumptions about skill, control, and danger will be tested away from familiar institutions.

The men drive into the isolated river country and arrange for locals to take their vehicles downstream to Aintry. At a roadside settlement, Drew plays guitar with a boy named Lonnie, whose banjo skill creates a brief connection despite the visitors' unease among the residents. The party launches two canoes, with Lewis and Drew in one and Ed and Bobby in the other. Lewis reads the river confidently and urges the others onward; Ed begins learning to respond to the current rather than merely observing it. The valley's beauty and isolation deliver the intensity he wanted, but they also make clear how far the group has moved from help. They camp along the river and continue into rougher country, still treating the expedition as a demanding adventure under Lewis's control.

After the canoes separate, Ed and Bobby encounter two armed local men in the woods. The strangers restrain them, humiliate Ed, and sexually assault Bobby. Lewis arrives unseen and kills the man holding the shotgun with an arrow; the second attacker escapes. The four canoeists decide against seeking the authorities immediately, fearing that they cannot prove self-defense and will face local retaliation. They conceal the dead man and press downriver, hoping to reach Aintry before the fugitive can act. In a dangerous rapid, Drew suddenly falls from his canoe. The boats wreck, Lewis suffers a severe leg fracture, and Drew vanishes. Ed, Bobby, and Lewis are stranded in the gorge. From the circumstances of Drew's fall, they fear the escaped attacker has followed them and is firing from the rim above the river.

With Lewis immobilized, Ed takes responsibility for getting the survivors out. He climbs the gorge at night carrying Lewis's bow, waits above the river, and confronts a man he believes to be the escaped assailant. Ed kills him with an arrow, nearly dies in the descent, and hides the body. Back at the river, the men find Drew's body. Because its injuries could expose the violence behind their cover story, they weigh loyalty against survival and sink Drew in deep water rather than bring him to the authorities. Ed and Bobby then maneuver the damaged canoe and the injured Lewis through the remaining rapids. They reach Aintry and report an accident, claiming Drew disappeared in the river. At the hospital and sheriff's office, inconsistencies draw scrutiny. Deputy Queen connects their route with a missing relative, while Sheriff Bullard searches without finding decisive evidence.

The search fails to recover Drew or evidence that disproves the survivors' account. Sheriff Bullard remains skeptical but releases Ed and Bobby, warning them away from the area, while Lewis stays for treatment of his shattered leg. Back in Atlanta, the men do not preserve the fellowship Ed once imagined. Bobby distances himself from both Ed and Lewis. Lewis eventually recovers, but injury has reduced the physical mastery that formerly defined him. Ed resumes life with Martha, their son, and his work, now valuing their ordinary security differently after discovering his own capacity for violence and endurance. He cannot entirely leave the river behind; it enters his dreams and remains linked to the hidden acts known only to the survivors. The dam is completed and the valley floods. Aintry and the places where the bodies were concealed vanish beneath the reservoir, protecting the men's secret while fixing the drowned landscape in Ed's memory.

Ed, Bobby, and the badly injured Lewis reach Aintry with a story that presents Drew's disappearance and their injuries as the results of a canoeing accident. The sheriff doubts parts of the account, and Deputy Queen suspects that the visitors encountered his missing relative, but a search produces no body or decisive evidence. The sheriff lets the men leave while warning them not to return. Lewis recovers from his broken leg, though his former physical certainty is diminished. Bobby withdraws from contact with Ed and Lewis. Ed returns to Martha, his son, and his advertising work with a stronger sense of attachment to ordinary life, yet the river remains present in his dreams and in the secret shared by the survivors. The completed dam eventually floods the valley, submerging the river, the town, and the concealed dead beneath a reservoir, putting the physical evidence beyond recovery without erasing Ed's memory of it.