Well, here it is folks: the Turkish version of DELIVERANCE. I'm sure anybody familiar with the Turkish versions of STAR WARS, STAR TREK and the like will be expecting a strange spoof of the John Boorman film, complete with stolen footage and dodgy characters. Instead, acclaimed director Serif Goren delivers a neat little action movie on a tight budget that focuses on drama and character interaction. The movie is pretty shocking in parts and has a powerful soundtrack, that nicely varies a twee theme tune (for the 'safe' parts of the film) with lots of discordant echoes and screams for the bloodshed.
Of course, the famous scene in DELIVERANCE (involving an unfortunate Ned Beatty) is given a cheap re-run in this film, with a couple of pervy Turkish yokels assaulting our young (female) heroines. Yet such moments are not as powerful and instead concentrate on the macho-action Turkish tradition. A lot of the machismo comes from the inclusion of a moustachioed Turkish hero character (the guide), who is a desperate Burt Reynolds wannabe! Reynolds, as I'll call him, spends the film shooting the bad guys with arrows, climbing cliffs barehanded, and doing various other stunts, and THE RIVER benefits greatly from his strong presence. He's certainly preferable to the annoyingly whiny teens/twenty somethings that make up the other victims.
Of course, the famous scene in DELIVERANCE (involving an unfortunate Ned Beatty) is given a cheap re-run in this film, with a couple of pervy Turkish yokels assaulting our young (female) heroines. Yet such moments are not as powerful and instead concentrate on the macho-action Turkish tradition. A lot of the machismo comes from the inclusion of a moustachioed Turkish hero character (the guide), who is a desperate Burt Reynolds wannabe! Reynolds, as I'll call him, spends the film shooting the bad guys with arrows, climbing cliffs barehanded, and doing various other stunts, and THE RIVER benefits greatly from his strong presence. He's certainly preferable to the annoyingly whiny teens/twenty somethings that make up the other victims.
