The Deer Hunter Reviews

Considering the cast, the critical acclaim and accolades 'The Deer Hunter' garnered, and still does garner, part of me was expecting much more. It is a long way from a bad film, in fact it's good and often very impressive, but it's also uneven in places.

'The Deer Hunter' is by some way director Michael Cimino's best film, and it contains his best ever directing. That's saying a good deal, considering that only a few years later he would go on to direct the notorious flop 'Heaven's Gate' and his career never really recovered. 'The Deer Hunter' is considered by some one of the finest Vietnam films (don't quite agree, to me there are far better examples), but it is also perhaps the most controversial. Either viewpoint is very easy to understand.

Despite its many impressive, outstanding even, elements, 'The Deer Hunter' is uneven. It is a bit too long (and no before anybody sneers, there have been films of similar length and even longer that still manage to be great films, a few among the best ever made), and would have been solved by tighter editing and a little less time on the lengthy wedding sequence, which is compelling with some strong character development but could easily have been trimmed.

Parts are disjointed too, with some abrupt scene shifts and a heavy-handed patriotic ending that felt incredibly tacky against the rest of the film. There are deficiencies in the sound quality on top of all this.

On the other hand, editing aside, 'The Deer Hunter' is an exceptionally well made film. The cinematography is quite magnificent and the attention to detail in the settings and the rest of the production both sumptuous and rich in atmosphere, the authenticity also remarkable. The music haunts the mind and is very beautiful, the mournful guitar theme unforgettable.

Cimino is at his best in the director's chair, while the script provokes thought and the story is often incredibly powerful and moving. The highlight is the justly acclaimed Russian Roulette sequence, which today is genuinely harrowing and will stay with you forever.

Robert De Niro has seldom been more restrained and gives an affecting performance. Even better is Christopher Walken, who has never reduced me to tears before and he really wrenches the heart here, making his character a compellingly real one and the most relatable one. John Savage, John Cazale (in his last film before his ultimely death) and a young Meryl Streep are sterling in support.

In summary, uneven film but often very impressive with much to admire. 7/10 Bethany Cox

When this movie was released. The popular joke was. I went to see The Deer Hunter in the cinemas, three hours in and nothing happened. There was still another four hours left!

When you find yourself watching a movie where Christopher Walken is playing the most normal character at the start, you know you will be heading to some difficult places.

It is obvious that Director Michael Cimino was obsessed with The Godfather. The Deer Hunter has a long segment featuring a wedding at the start of the movie. The characters are of Russian heritage instead of Italian. Two of the main cast were in The Godfather films.

The wedding scene is used to establish the Pennsylvania steel mill community and the three friends. Mike Vronsky (Robert De Niro) is a bit of a loner and a hot head. Steven Pushkov (John Savage) is the young man who is getting married. Nick Chevotarevich (Christopher Walken) is the warm hearted one that everyone likes. He is going out with Linda (Meryl Streep) a woman that Mike also has his eye on.

All three men are due to go to Vietnam. When they get there, all three will be captured by the Vietcong and face traumas that will change their lives.

Surprisingly the Vietnam combat scenes are brief. There is the famous shot of De Niro with a flamethrower. More infamous is Cimino portraying the Vietcong as savages. One soldier throws a grenade in a bunker with women and children inside.

The film was controversial at the time due to the Russian roulette scenes. It is apparent that this is a metaphor for the madness of war and the mental damage of the characters.

Cimino wanted to make a modern epic and he succeeded. The film won the best picture Oscar. The authorship of the movie was mired in contention. It has four credited writers and this contributed to the choppiness in the story when the film moves to Vietnam and onwards from there.

Like Apocalypse Now which would be released a year later. The Deer Hunter is not strongly anti war even though the characters are damaged by their time in Vietnam. This could be due to the fact the Vietnam war only ended four years earlier. It was still a raw wound. It was not until Oliver Stone's Platoon when the Vietnam war was shown in a more critical light and only because Stone fought in the war.

The treatment of the Vietnamese is racism on the level of native American tribes in many of those old westerns where they were stock villains. The accusation of racism followed Cimino when he made Year of the Dragon in 1985.

There were some flaws in the story. It was never clear why the three joined up especially as Mike and Nick are older characters.

How did Nick know that Steven was in a veteran hospital when Mike had difficulties finding this out. This looks like a flaw further compounded when Mike next sees Nick. By this time Nick has totally metamorphosised who does even acknowledge Mike.

I watched The Deer Hunter as a teenager, I managed to rent it on video when I was not yet old enough for an 18 rated film. I should not had bothered, it premiered on television two months later. I watched it again over 30 years later with a cleaned up print.

It does stands up well. There was a lot of detail in the Pennsylvania scenes, the extensive use of location shooting. Actors hungry for a meaty script. What a difference in De Niro from here to Dirty Grandpa.

One of the weak link was the shallow use of female characters, two of them are literal punchbags. Dare I say it, maybe another actor could had played Stan. I noticed in my first viewing John Cazale looked gaunt and slightly different from the Godfather films. Now watching him in the knowledge that he died before the film was released, he just does not look well and was also too old to be in the main characters close circle of friends.

I never understood the acclaim this movie got. I tried watching this at differant times in my life thinking i might see or understand something that will make me agree with the reviewers must be into boring movies. The wedding the movie starts with and goes on forever had nothing at all to make that part of the of movie even remotely interesting.
The next part is the guys deer hunting. Again nothing interesting. Maybe the directer wants us get an idea of the characters which i would understand if any character in the movie was interesting.
Then the only part of the movie which isnt long to class it as war movie is amazing. Robert Denero shows us why he's the best actor of all time. If they all died playing russian roulette and ended the movie at that point i wouldnt have had to suffer more endless depressing boring characters saying (in my opinion) nothing.
This movie got an oscar and critical aclaim for one reason.It had an amazing who are loved by the movie world. If i was a proffesional critic back then and wrote my honest opinion like i am now i would be fired and destroyed.
All you peaple who say this movie is one the best, think this cos all the top peaple Hollywood who we respect said it. OH. If they said its good i bet alot you agreed before even watching.
Im not saying this to be harsh.I'm just been honest. I know most of you wont agree with because youve probaly told to many peaple you think its an amazing movie.
The vietnam scenes are amazing but such a tiny part of the movie.
Please prove me wrong and give one reason you think this movie is great ?
And dont mention the war part which i agree was very powerful an amazing acting.
Final thought.
If you havent seen this movie. Sooner or later someone will tell you its amazing. Dont believe them and dont waste 3 hrs of your life by watching it.
An amazing cast of actors doesnt guarentee an amazing movie.

The 70’s are usually considered the Golden Age of American cinema and, at the time, the studios were willing to give a lot of money and some amazing amount of freedom to directors such as Francis Ford Coppola to do whatever they wanted. Well, Michael Cimino managed to single-handedly halt this blessed period with ‘Heaven’s Gate’ which turned out to be a disaster, financially and critically. His career would never recover and since then the American movie production has been ruled by blockbusters and it won’t change anytime soon. It is a real shame because the movie he made before, the movie he should be remembered for, was an amazing piece of work. Indeed, it is easily belongs to the best movies about the Vietnam war like ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’. Basically, even though the scope and amount of details were quite impressive, Cimino managed to keep an amazing rhythm. After re-watching it again after so many years, I was impressed about its perfect flow, how it takes the time to show the life of these young men living a simple but happy and carefree life. Then, they were thrown in an alien land and basically go through hell. Obviously, the Russian roulette scenes have become really iconic and you can literally see Christopher Walken’s character mentally melting down in front of you. To conclude, it is a great movie, a classic, and a must see for any decent movie lover.

One of those rare movies that is powerful and tender simultaneously. A love story that feeds into itself without resorting to needless sentimentalist imagery.
If you approve of Michael's "one-shot" policy - and anyone who loves animals as much as he does could not do otherwise - you'll not fail to make the vital connection that this film projects.

Critics and film historians have often noted how the film is divided into three equal thirds or acts. Likewise the plot synopsis is also divided into three acts, spanning the years of 1968-1975.[a 2]

Act I - In Clairton, a small working class town in Western Pennsylvania, in late 1968, Russian American steel workers Michael (De Niro), Steven (Savage), and Nick (Walken), with the support of their friends Stanley (Cazale), John (Dzundza) and Axel (Chuck Aspegren, his only movie role; he was a steel worker from Gary, Indiana), are preparing for two rites of passage: marriage and military service.

The opening scenes set the character traits of the three main characters. Michael is the no-nonsense, serious but unassuming leader of the three, Steven the loving, near-groom, pecked at by his mother for not wearing a scarf with his tuxedo and Nick is the quiet, introspective man who loves hunting because, "I like the trees...you know...the way the trees are..." The recurring theme of "one shot", which is how Michael prefers to take down a deer, is introduced.

Before the trio ships out, Steven and his girlfriend, Angela (who is pregnant by another man but loved by Steven nonetheless) get married in an Orthodox wedding. In the meantime, Michael must contain his own feelings for Nick's lovely but pensive girlfriend Linda (Streep), who has just moved out of her abusive father's house.

At the wedding reception held at the local VFW, the guys all get drunk, dance, sing and have a good time, but then notice a soldier wearing his dress uniform and the green beret of the US Army's Special Forces sitting at the end of the bar. Michael buys the soldier a drink and tries to start a conversation with him to find out what Vietnam is like, but he ignores Michael. After Michael confronts him to explain that he, Steven and Nick are going to Vietnam, the Green Beret raises his glass and says "fuck it" to everyone's shock and amazement. Obviously disturbed and under mental anguish, the Green Beret again toasts them with "fuck it". After being restrained by the others from starting a fight, Michael goes back to the bar with the others and in a mocking jest to the Green Beret, raises his glass and toasts him with "fuck it". The Green Beret then glances over at Michael and grins smugly.

Later, during the Russian Orthodox traditional wedding toast to Steven and Angela, which is believed to be good luck for a couple who drink from conjoined goblets without spilling a drop, a drop of blood-red wine unknowingly spills on her wedding gown, foreshadowing the coming events. Near the end of the reception, Nick asks Linda to marry him, and she agrees. Later that night, after a drunk and naked Michael runs through the streets of town, Nick chases him down and begs Michael not to leave him "over there" if anything happens. The next day, Michael and the remaining friends go deer hunting one last time, and Michael again scores a deer with "one shot".

Act II - The film then jumps abruptly to a war-torn village, where U.S. helicopters attack a communist occupied Vietnamese village with napalm. A North Vietnamese soldier throws a stick grenade into a hiding place full of civilians. An unconscious Mike (now a staff sergeant in the Army Special Forces) wakes up to see the NVA soldier shoot a woman carrying a baby. In revenge Mike burns the NVA with a flame thrower and then shoots him numerous times with an M16. Meanwhile a unit of UH-1 helicopters drops off several US infantrymen, Nick and Steven among them. Michael, Steven, and Nick unexpectedly find each other just before they are captured and held together in a riverside prisoner of war camp with other US Army and ARVN prisoners. For entertainment, the sadistic guards force their prisoners to play Russian roulette and gamble on the outcome.

All three friends are forced to play. Steven aims the gun above his head, grazing himself with the bullet, and is punished by incarceration to an underwater cage, full of rats and the bodies of others who earlier faced the same fate. Michael and Nick end up playing against each other, and Michael convinces the guards to let them play with three bullets in the gun. After a tense match, they kill their captors and escape. Mike had earlier argued with Nick about whether Steven could be saved, but after killing their captors he rescues Steven.

The three float downriver on a tree branch. An American helicopter accidentally finds them, but only Nick is able to climb aboard. The weakened Steven falls back into water and Mike plunges in the water to rescue him. Unluckily, Steven breaks both legs in the fall. Mike helps him to reach the river bank, and then carries him through the jungle to friendly lines. Approaching a caravan of locals escaping the war zone, he stops a South Vietnamese military truck and places the wounded Steven on it, asking the soldiers to take care of him. Nick, who is psychologically damaged apparently suffering amnesia, recuperates in a military hospital in Saigon with no knowledge on the status of his friends. At night, he aimlessly stumbles through the red-light district. At one point, he encounters Julien Grinda (Pierre Segui), a champagne-drinking friendly Frenchman outside a gambling den where men play Russian roulette for money. Grinda entices the reluctant Nick to participate, and leads him into the den. Mike is present in the den, watching the game, but the two friends do not notice each other at first. When Mike does see Nick, he is unable to get his attention. When Nick is introduced into the game he instead grabs the gun, fires it at the current contestant and then again at his own temple, causing the audience to riot in protest. Grinda hustles Nick outside to his car to escape the angry mob. Mike cannot catch up with Nick and Grinda as they speed away.

Act III - Back in the U.S., Mike returns home but maintains a low profile. He tells the cab driver to pass by the house where all his friends are assembled, as he is embarrassed by the fuss made over him by Linda and the others. Mike goes to a hotel and struggles with his feelings, as he thinks both Nick and Steven are dead or missing. He eventually visits Linda and grows close to her, but only because of the friend they both think they have lost. Mike is eventually told about Angela, whom he goes to visit at the home of Steven's mother. She is lethargic and barely responsive. She writes a phone number on a scrap of paper, which leads Mike to the local veterans' hospital where Steven has been for several months.

Mike goes hunting with Axel, John and Stanley one more time, and after tracking a beautiful deer across the woods, takes his "one shot" but pulls the rifle up and fires into the air, unable to take another life. He then sits on a rock escarpment and yells out, "OK?", which echoes back at him from the opposing rock faces leading down to the river, signifying his fight with his mental demons over losing Steven and Nick. He also berates Stanley for carrying around a small revolver and waving it around, not realizing it is still loaded. He knows the horror of war and wants no part of it anymore.

Steven has lost both his legs and is partially paralyzed. Mike visits Steven, who reveals that someone in Saigon has been mailing large amounts of cash to him, and Mike is convinced that it is Nick. Mike brings Steven home to Angela and then travels to Saigon just before its fall in 1975. He tracks down the Frenchman Grinda, who has made a lot of money from the Russian-roulette-playing American.

He finds Nick in a crowded roulette club, but Nick appears to have no recollection of his friends or his home in Pennsylvania. Mike sees the needle tracks on his arm, a sign of drug abuse. He realizes that Nick thinks he (Michael) and Steven are dead, since he is the only one who made it back on the helicopter. Mike enters himself in a game of Russian roulette against Nick, hoping to jar Nick's memory and persuade him to come home, but Nick's mind is gone. In the last moment, after Mike's attempts to remind him of their trips hunting together, he finally breaks through, and Nick recognizes Mike and smiles. Nick then tells Mike, "one shot", raises the gun to his temple, and pulls the trigger. The bullet is in the gun's top chamber, and Nick kills himself. Horrified, Michael tries to revive him, but to no avail.

Epilogue - Back home in 1974, there is a funeral for Nick, whom Michael brings home, good to his promise. The film ends with the whole cast at their friend's bar, singing "God Bless America" and toasting in Nick's honor

''You have to think about one shot. One shot is what it's all about. A deer's gotta be taken with one shot. I try to tell people that but they don't listen.''

An in-depth examination of the way that the Vietnam war affects the lives of people in a small industrial town in the USA.

Robert De Niro: Michael

Meryl Streep: Linda

Christopher Walken: Nick

What can I say but beautiful simply beautiful. Forget every other Vietnam movie, every Rambo film, every war imitator such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now, forget about them for a moment, The Deer Hunter has one thing they don't have initially... a heartfelt study of men and more importantly of a man who deals with the after effects of war in so much detail. This is three hours that will change your life.



Robert De Niro's performance is without a doubt a colossus of triumph. An evolution of a man has never been shown in such detail. How war changes your whole way of life that it stays with you even after it's over.
Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken are fantastic. A love triangle also provides interest and a frustration that as it plays out you can only watch in wonderment.

I love the scene where all the men are gathered round sombrely, for a moment at peace...listening to their companion play the piano all captured by it's soothing notes. Close ups of faces caught up in the emotion of the music are shown in a way it moved me. Then it out of the blue fast forwards to them in the turmoil of Vietnam and the atrocities of soldiers attacking civilians. We see Micheal explode into action, a positively cringing game of Russian roulette with the Vietcong rebels. Three bullets really takes the biscuit, to witness the outcome is pure adrenaline and to see his friend at the start lose hope only to be comforted by Michael is heart warming yet terrifying.

The bond of friendship and what lengths you will go to for it is so resolute in this it will turbulently set your emotions flaring. Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro later on repeating their roulette game against each other is beautiful. As he begins to crumble to see tears, to remember his life, it's like waking from a dream but what happens is tragic.
One of the best films I've seen that really does show not just war but an analysis of the human psyche, which we can all relate too.

Don't be put off by the long running time, this is a classic that doesn't quit till the credits and will give your mind alot to chew on.
Metal Gear Solid, Rambo, and now Deer Hunter. Really does depict horrors of Vietnam and the after effects on its soldiers.

Another classic, one of De Niro's best, and grand story-telling and vision from Director Michael Cimino.