Really overrated

Rating: 2/10 (30 April 2014)

Another big letdown. I don't simply understand what the others find so amazing about this film. The rating absolutely doesn't fit. The Deer Hunter is long and boring, insulting, full of nonsense and misinformation.
One big disappointment has come when I found out that this is no war film. There is a little footage from Vietnam and almost nothing from combat. It is called war film so I expected war. I don't want to speak about the nonsenses like Russian roulette all over Asia, 7 years long Russian roulette career, saving friend from Russian roulette through playing Russian roulette... Man I got sick of Russian roulette here, too much of it. These things have been already mentioned in other reviews.
I want to talk about the editing and script. As I thought The Deer Hunter is a war movie, I've expected something like 10 - 15 minute introduction and then training or directly Vietnam war where you can see some gradual character's development through the realism and horrors of war. I was mistaken. After first promising 5 minutes comes the 50 minutes long(!!!) wedding situation which is probably supposed to teach us about the main characters and get like them, but it goes on and on and seems like never-ending bore! It is literally empty! While watching this I was at first like: "Ok, this will last about 10 minutes, no problem." After another 10 minutes: "Ok, half an hour, I can take this." After 45 minutes: "God, it looks like the first half of movie is just wedding!" The pace was so slow and it didn't change during the whole film. Additionally, the amount of information you learn during this sequence could be told in 5 minutes. You learn that our friends like drinking alcohol, doing mess, hunting, shouting, fighting, wasting beer, being loud all the day and that they eventually go to the Vietnam. I've seen movies where such behaviour was funny or at least tolerable, but here it is so annoying when it occurs like each 5 minutes! On the other hand there is nothing told about their background, their motives, how and why did they get to Nam war... I really wanted to learn why Cazale (Stanley) is such an idiot, pointing that little gun at people all the time. The characters are really unlikeable since the beginning except for DeNiro and Walken maybe. The wedding and hunting situation ends with moving moment where one guy is playing piano and others are staring at him.
After long 65 minutes!!, the movie immediately moves to a village in Nam, where DeNiro shoots one VC and then meets his friends (what coincidence). There is no explanation of how they joined the army, how they got there, nothing. 10 seconds after meeting, few grenades explode outside the village and at this point the film immediately jumps again to a scene where our friends are imprisoned in a tiger cage in a VC camp. And again no explanation of what and how. While watching the Deer Hunter, I was getting the feeling that the movie is somehow ripped apart, incoherent.
This brings me to another issue. I didn't find out what is the main story to follow. Is it the wedding and DeNiro's secret love to Meryl Streep? Is it the promise that DeNiro will never leave Walken in Nam? Is it about the way our friends deal with war? What is it? I think there should have been some main plot, otherwise it's difficult to follow the movie.
DH contains heavy load of scenes which are unnecessarily long or unnecessary at all with meaningless dialogues. Consider for example the sequence where they argue about the boots before they go hunt. First of all, Cazale gets out of car and repeats five times: "This is not it." Then they eat, do mess, shout, fight for mustard, throw bags, waist beer and throw food again (Everyone who likes order must find it disturbing and I do). Then, Cazale asks DeNiro if he could borrow his boots. DeNiro says no. Cazale doesn't know if NO means NO or YES so they argue, DeNiro says Cazale forgets boots every time, Cazale says that DeNiro is gay, DeNiro says couple more times NO, friends wonder what is the matter with him and both Cazale and DeNiro end up angry. This lasts almost 10 minutes and every bit of the scene is meaningless! And impact of this scene? It has no impact on the story at all! Movie goes on after this and DeNiro and Cazale behave like nothing has happened. The editor could have cut out this scene and nobody would even notice! You don't see any explanation for what has just happened or what was DeNiro's motive to be so strict about the boots, but it's typical for the Deer Hunter. It is not like there is some room for you to guess how it could have happened. There are some serious story holes in the film.
The scenes like these, especially wedding situation where 10 minutes would have sufficed, should have been reduced or deleted and Cimino should have paid more attention to explanatory scenes, which could have made the movie cohesive.
Last problem I want to mention is the sound of Deer Hunter. Have anybody of you noticed too, that The Deer Hunter is pretty loud? I mean the voices of our characters are silent in comparison with the noise in the background (factory, wedding, Saigon...) and in order to hear the voices I had to keep volume on higher level, which has made watching the movie really uncomfortable for my ears. I actually loved quiet moments in DH.
All in all, The Deer Hunter is one of the biggest disappointments I have ever experienced in film watching. I gave one star more for DeNiro who was in spite of all the cons good as always.