Indulgent Tripe

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2017)

During the midst of the malaise of the late 1970's, Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" inexplicably hit a chord with critics and movie-audiences.
The story is about working-class pals from a Pennsylvania mill town who end-up being destroyed physically and/or mentally due to their experiences in the Vietnam War. The characters are Hollywood script-writer stereotypes of blue-collar America: mill employed, cheap beer swilling, and deer hunting macho-men whose misguided patriotism led them to believe that fighting in Vietnam was the right thing to do. These were the dummies who got duped into fighting while all the "smart" kids headed for Canada, enlisted in the National Guard/Coast Guard or hid-out on college campuses.
"The Deer Hunter" was one of the first films to actually address the Vietnam War and its alleged effects upon its veterans. Hollywood had for the most part studiously avoided the subject. Yet, three years after the war's ignominious end American film audiences decided that it was time to view the subject. However, why they thought "The Deer Hunter" was the proper vehicle to address America's hangover from the Vietnam War is beyond me.
This is an overlong, over-indulgent, and incoherent film that says a lot more about its director's ego than the Vietnam War. The Vietnam scenes are beyond silly which consist mostly of our lunch-pail heroes being forced to perform Russian Roulette for the entertainment of their Viet Cong captors. B-grade Hollywood Korean War films about the Commie brainwashing of GI Joe POWs are more realistic and honest. It would take another eight years before Hollywood actually did Vietnam War veterans some justice with Oliver Stone's "Platoon." However, until "Platoon," "The Deer Hunter" stood as one of "the" Vietnam War movies.
The late Michael Cimino is now mostly forgotten. However, for a brief moment he was mentioned alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and others as a top director of American cinema. The critical and box-office success of "The Deer Hunter" was responsible for that reputation. However, the seeds of Cimino's downfall from the A-list were planted during the making of that film. Cimino's penchant for budgetary excess and exceeding perfectionism were already on display with "The Deer Hunter" which saw delays and went seriously over-budget. An example of Cimino's over-excess was his decision that the Allegheny Mountains and Whitetail deer of Pennsylvania were not picturesque enough so he had the entire production moved to Washington so he could film in the Cascade Mountains with imported Asian red deer. "The Deer Hunter's" success allowed Cimino to get away with those kind of excesses, but he and United Artists would not be so lucky on his next film- the disastrous box-office bomb "Heaven's Gate" which nearly bankrupted UA and practically destroyed Michael Cimino's career and reputation.
One last thing is that despite Cimino's reputation as an arch-perfectionist the overall look of "The Deer Hunter" is wrong. The bulk of the film is supposed to take place in the mid-to-late 1960's, but everything about it looks like the late 1970's. Yes, actors in the late 70's were loathe to cut their hair because they knew it would make getting other acting jobs more difficult, but still if one is going to make a period piece then at least try. George Lucas got his actors to wear appropriate hairstyles for "American Graffiti," but crazy perfectionist Cimino couldn't get his cast to do likewise?