Possibly one of the most over-rated movies of all time

Rating: 2/10 (1 February 2002)

The Deer Hunter claims to be a film about war, and to believe the hype you might think it was a good one. It is, unfortunately, neither. The film consists of a series of disconnected, almost unrelated scenes - you're never given the time to form any emotional attachment to the characters. Huge swathes of time where this could happen - time that would be the meat of any good movie - is completely skipped in what seems to be an attempt to prevent that bond from forming.
Without emotional attachment, the film is boring, trite and cliched. An obsession with a Russian Roulette theme doesn't make a good movie, and that (apart from some fair acting when dealing with the truly terrible script) is about all the Deer Hunter has. The real question here is how this movie has appeared in the IMDB Top 100 movies (99th at the time of this writing) when it doesn't have a coherent plot, has only average acting and really has no story to tell.
There are many much, MUCH better war movies out there. Give this one a pass, and try any of the others - whatever you choose, it is bound to be an improvement.