Arvid (Dejan Cukic) is a pushover who can't seem to find his way in life. He works at a bank and lives with his girlfriend, Hanne. The two get into an argument over breakfast because Arvid donated 800 crowns to a church fund—money that Hanne wanted to use for shopping. As he tries to move past the dispute unscathed she makes him out to be a boring purist who's trying to save the world.

We then jump to Richard (Lester Wiese), a traveling American who settles into a seat at a bar and has a mysterious meeting with Arvid at noon. The bartender and a patron start to chat with him. With two hours to spare until Arvid's arrival, he recaps the recent series of events that have put Arvid in a delicate situation—a man who up until 12 days prior Richard had never heard of.

The rest of the film is a series of flashbacks leading up to Arvid's meeting with Richard. Following his argument with Hanne, Arvid went to work and encountered a disgruntled customer who decided to help himself to a “loan” with a shotgun. Tired of standing on the sidelines, Arvid strikes the man with a racket and puts an end to the sloppy robbery. His employers decide to reward him for his heroic efforts and send him home early with a paid vacation. When he gets to his apartment he discovers that his girlfriend has left him and taken all of their furniture. A woman comes to his door and starts to attack him, claiming that she's the girlfriend of the man he interfered with at the bank and that they needed the money to try and get in vitro fertilization. Out on the street, a crummy rock band attacks him on the grounds of being a hero.

Deliverance is a wholly original American film, directed by a Brit, an action survival thriller in the Straw Dogs mode. Ahead of its time in ’72 it precluded a number of genres that would emerge over the decades from “hillbillyxploitation” of the '70s to “torture porn” of more recent years. Films from Southern Comfort to The Descent have been explained and pitched as “Deliverance with…” No film since has been able to combine the stunning filmmaking and the shock, but not just for shock's sake. This isn’t an exploitation film, beneath the horror there is great and powerful purpose, when man takes on wild nature, he also finds out what is buried in his own nature.

If you like your ultra-violence with a pulse, you must see Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs—the tale of David and Amy Sumner, played with fervor by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. Unlike Hoffman’s more well-known portrayals of a man with wisdom and/or humor, his performance in the film produces a chill and admiration that could rival with any cold-blooded killer onscreen. He plays a mathematician who, with his wife, decides to take up residency in her native village of rural England. A place that seems peaceful, yet is nothing but—occupied with Cornish thugs, rat-breeders, tyrants and more than one sexual deviant.

While trying to find relaxation and work on their marriage and his profession, the two find themselves in a vicious and animalistic race to restore peace, David’s masculinity, and to survive. After days of passive-aggressive plots, spiteful conversation, and violence against women, a local girl goes missing. The man suspected of her demise, Henry Niles (David Warner), the town metal-handicap, winds up in the Sumner’s custody one evening. While protecting him in his home, a war unfolds between Sumner and the village thugs, unleashing a competition of wit vs. experience that sends more than one man to their graves.