The Deer Hunter (1979)

Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Deer Hunter is simultaneously an audacious directorial conceit and one of the greatest films ever made about friendship and the personal impact of war. Like Apocalypse Now, it's hardly a conventional battle film--the soldier's experience was handled with greater authenticity in Platoon--but its depiction of war on an intimate scale packs a devastatingly dramatic punch. Director Michael Cimino may be manipulating our emotions with masterful skill, but he does it in a way that stirs the soul and pinches our collective nerves with graphic, high-intensity scenes of men under life-threatening duress. Although Russian-roulette gambling games were not a common occurrence during the Vietnam war, they're used here as a metaphor for the futility of the war itself. To the viewer, they become unforgettably intense rites of passage for the best friends--Pennsylvania steelworkers played by Robert De Niro, John Savage, and Oscar winner Christopher Walken--who may survive or perish during their tour through a tropical landscape of hell. Back home, their loved ones must cope with the war's domestic impact, and in doing so they allow The Deer Hunter to achieve a rare combination of epic storytelling and intimate, heart-rending drama. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com essential video

Sad To Say, It's Lacking

This is one of those movies that SHOULD have worked so well, and comes so close. The best way for me to describe it is to actually compare it to another film with Robert De Niro: "The Mission." Although a very different film, it shares the same fatal flaw as "The Deer Hunter": we really never get a chance to get to KNOW these characters very well. So instead of feeling what they're feeling, we just sort of watch what happens to them. Both films feel very impersonal. But I think "The Mission" actually has more food for thought that this one.

But hey, I'm supposed to be reviewing "The Deer Hunter," right? This movie is incredibly well-acted and well-photographed, but the story doesn't compel. The opening wedding scene, for starters, is ridiculously long and ends up serving no dramatic purpose. And the different portions of the film (wedding scenes, hunting scenes, war scenes, coming home scenes) don't gel so well. And the pace for the entire film is out-of-wack; rather than gripping, it's for the most part uninvolving.

So, what's good about the movie? Several things, actually. Like I said, the performances by all involved are absolutely superb, even if their characters are all left underdeveloped. The Vietnam scenes are stunning and disturbing (I actually had a conversation with a Vietnam vet once who said that this is the one Vietnam War films that he could never watch), and you will never be able to erase the images of the Russian Roulette from your mind. Harrowing stuff, regardless of its apparent historical inaccuracy.

It's not a bad movie by any stretch. It's just not that great. Worth seeing at least once, though. October 2, 2008

One of my wife favorites

My wife top five movies.I was not very crazy about it.Once again it tried to make fools out of us and what we did in the Vietnam war. September 6, 2008

Good But Too Long!

I just couldn't get into this because of the length. As noted dozens of times, the wedding scene was just ridiculously long. My other problem was that the movie didn't flow... it just jumped from scene to scene leaving the viewer wondering what just happened. I'm glad I finally saw this, but what a waste of time. August 23, 2008

A defining film in the long history of war movies

Deer Hunter is the story of a group of young American men prior to, during and after their service as GI's in Vietnam. It is a powerful, intimate and realistic movie that touches the very soul of the American Dream. The young men are innocent, a bit lost in their world, naive, full of life and expecting a lot from their future prior to fighting in Vietnam. Then they get there, in the midst of war, in that place where they lose all of their illusions, their mind or their body for some. Save for friendship, they come back from Vietnam as haunted shells.

The movie is a beautiful, almost documentary-like story. It tackles the questioning and naivety of the youth, the atrocity of war, the appalling handling of war casualties -be they physical or mental- as well as the power of true feelings in times of troubles and, most importantly, the need for finding something worth living for. Some of the characters will find it in friendship, or in respecting life, all of them will call it America.

The story line is extremely well supported by a plethora of top notch actors (de Niro, Savage, Walken, Strip...) that further add to the overall quality of the movie.

After watching Deer Hunter, the concept of war and freedom will never be the same again. August 20, 2008

Skip it

I nearly fell asleep three times in the first hour alone. The last thirty minutes was a contrived joke and I hardly understand why it's called The Deer Hunter-should be plural. I like Deniro, Streep, and Walken but this movie is pretentious and boring. July 20, 2008

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