So...Deliverance

Did they straight up murder a hunter or did that guy really shoot their friend?

Watched it last year and don't remember it 100 percent, but I believe he shot their friend or was one of the ones who wanted them dead. Weird place for him to be hunting. Over a cliff.

But the movie intentionally doesn't say for sure.

Was rather meant to be ambiguous? Must have missed that and just assumed he was one of rhe hillbilly rapists.

Guess that works sell with the themes though of them having to live with truth of what happened and not tell anybody but at same time maybe living with guilt of not knowing whether they killed an innocent and being unable to tell anybody what happened to their friend who died.

TBH I don't remember much of that movie.

The rapist that got away told his friends that they killed his friend so they were hunting them.

I thought that for years as I had seen the film on VHS in the early 90's. But rewatching it recently I'm not so sure, thus the thread.

I need to rewatch this now myself. This possibility never really occurred to me, and it's amazing how much of a story relies on reader/viewer background and assumptions.

Get back to us with your opinion after you do.

Pay attention to the dude in the raft who 'gets shot'. I'm not so sure didn't just suicide out.

According to the DVD commentary, director John Boorman was trying to be ambiguous as to whether Drew was shot, or decided to take his own life out of a sense of despair.

The video is actually the commentary track from the initial DVD release. You can skip to the 54:04 mark where Boorman discusses the scene.

I wish more movies would play with ambiguity like this, instead of the full plot-detail by the end.

@br0kenrabbit: I like Deliverance. It's a solid movie that still holds up today.

It seems really clear that he wasn't shot. There's almost nothing to support the argument that he was shot outside of speculation from the pals (who seemed to be trying to convince themselves) and the fact that the hunter turned his gun on the Bowman (who was already aiming a shot at him).

The preceding conversation gives motive, he was clearly acting disturbed, there was no gunshot sound or sign of bullet impact, and it sure looked like an intentional dive.

The hunter later wasn't the same guy who ran away, that guy was nowhere to be found, and his pals didn't find a bullet wound on the body that they didn't have to convince themselves might be a bullet wound.

If I hadn't watched the director commentary stating it was meant to be ambiguous, you wouldn't be able to convince me that he was shot.

I that's how I put it together, too. Drew wouldn't put his life jacket on, stopped paddling, was clearly distressed.

Something else I've been thinking about: at the end the Sheriff mentions his deputy's father-in-law had gone out hunting and was missing, so I assumed this was the guy on the cliff. But later he says he was with another man, so maybe he was the rapist?

I tried figuring out who that guy was, too, but I don't think there's enough information to say without heavy speculation.

But I also don't think it matters. I think that bit was meant to dovetail into the earlier conversation about how screwed they'd be if they wound up in the local court system because they're all related to each other. A good portion of this movie boiled down to a debate about competing worldviews and the role of modern societal systems.

SQUEAL LIKE A PIG!!!

Dammit. Now you've got me wanting to watch Lord of the Flies.

Just those British accents...