Boredom hunter

This film is about four hours long and I'm pretty sure that three and a half hours of that is comprised solely of a wedding scene. There aren't really many battle sequences in The Deer Hunter, which surprised me, considering it is billed as a Vietnam war film.

It is rightly famed for the Russian Roulette scene that occurs about three quarters of the way through, and without doubt that was extremely tense. While the ending is also quite moving - Robert DeNiro's character finally parts with some emotion - it was totally predictable. I think Christopher Walken's performance steals the show though. I found the rest of the viewing experience pretty boring and it was only thanks to a burst of will power that I actually made it to the closing credits.

I understand how they need to show just how close these friends are before they ship off to war, and the beginning does well to highlight how difficult it is to fit in with your previous life when you return from the conflict, but I still think that too much time was spent on inane scenes.

7/10

Comments

nataliegoes

Posted : 2 years, 4 months ago at Aug 18 9:31

I completely agree!

the giraffe

Posted : 10 months, 2 weeks ago at Feb 8 16:58

Without credits, it's almost 3 hours actually even though it does FEEL like 4. I agree that way too much time was wasted on some scenes (the wedding especially)...probably could have been cut down to 2 hours. And Walken IS amazing.

One thing that bugged me was the fact that the story takes place over several years, but you get no sense of the time. It all seems like it occurs within a couple years, but the production notes say it's supposed to take place over 20 years. And yet no one ages the whole time?

Added by Grand Assault 2 years ago on 18 August 2007 07:10