An almost too-powerful and wrenching drama.

Rating: 10/10 (2 August 1999)

There are a handful of truly excellent movies that I only want to experience once and this is one of them. Michael Cimino's sweeping portrait of men drafted into war to commit atrocities against other men is harrowing. The survivors suffer more than the dead. I know a lot of knee-jerk liberals read a lot of jingoistic patriotism into Cimino's script especially when the movie ended with singing of the Star Spangled Banner (or another "patriotic" song), but I saw it as a ironic, if not sardonic, touch. This film could have been set in any war. I didn't see it as being specifically about Vietnam and thus the hotly debated use of Russian Roulette throughout the movie was an extremely effective metaphor rather than an historical fact or fiction. (I could care less whether it actually was used as a torture technique or not --all I know is that is moved me to the depths of my soul.)I was moved to tears by it. And of course the acting was brilliant. DeNiro gives one of best performances ever (and that is saying a lot) and he is matched by an excellent supporting cast. But as powerful as DeNiro is who can ever forget Christopher Walken's shattering performance in his Oscar winning role? The effect that Man's capacity for inhumanity had on him and everybody else was as tough to to watch as anything in movie history. His death was real shocker (in a very bad sense) and I don't even like remembering it as I write this. The Deerhunter is easily one of the top 20 films I've ever seen and is probably a top 10 pick. Its Oscars were richly deserved.