Cimino's film is undeniably powerful in its depiction of Pennsylvania steel worker's initiation into warfare and its after-effects

Rating: 9/10 (4 May 2008)

Opening in Pennsylvania steel town that morning, Steven (John Savage) is going to get married Just a few days later, he and his best friends Michael (Robert De Niro) and Nick (Christopher Walken) will join the Army and go to Vietnam
All three are made prisoners of war who finally escape their ordeal, although with several complications The terrible experiences that they are subjected to change their whole life
Over the course of more than three-hours of screen time, "The Deer Hunter" presents outrageous and impressive scenes of sadistic Vietcong force tossing grenades into shelters filled with helpless women and children, and later forcing American captives to play Russian roulette for their amusement, while the prison guards bet on the result
Whatever his intention, Cimino goes courageously forth, staging with power his big end during the fall of Saigon, depicting the trauma of war and the effort of one friend to rescue the other
The extreme effects of the conflict provide indelible images, and make us feel the pain, the compulsion, the threat, and the terror of war