Film Studies Block 3

Rating: 8/10 (23 May 2007)

#1. The symbolism for the Russian Roulette sequences. What was the director trying to get at? Do you agree or disagree with his concept? Include with this our discussion as related to patriotism.
To me, the Russian Roulette scenes, especially those at the PoW camp, symbolised the risks and dangers that soldiers during the Vietnam War faced every day. There are no documented cases of prisoners being forced to play this brutal game, instead, the screenwriter was trying to show us how Mike, Steve and Nick put there lives on the line just by going over there. He is trying to show how a soldiers life isn't in his own hands while engaging in war, but instead is in the hands of dumb luck. Cimino showed us that the Vietnam War was one big Russian Roulette game and that everyone had to pull the trigger.
The movie to me is patriotic on one level in the sense that it pays tribute to the troops by showing the horrors they went through and the impact it had on our lives, the movie showed very well the struggles many veterans went though trying to assimilate back into society at the end of the war. On the same not it showed how pointless and unnecessary the war was and that the US did more harm than good over there.