Long, pretentious and incredibly feeble

Rating: 1/10 (7 January 2010)

Deer Hunter has the lowest content-per-minute of any film I can recall. It's like listening to the dial tone after your caller has hung up - only not as exciting. Is the film saying something incredibly deep? No. It's just s-a-y-i-n-g i-t r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y. It has little if anything to say about Vietnam, and pathetically little to say about human psychology in general. It's just endless and empty.
About the only decent bit is the Russian roulette sequence. Yes, this is indeed gripping... or, at least, it could have been, within a less bloated package. As it is, it only seems to add insult to injury - as if to say, THIS is how interesting your three hours COULD have been, IF we could have been bothered to come up with an actual story, not to mention the discipline to tell it economically.
In a way, the Russian roulette metaphor IS appropriate. Because someone would have to hold a gun to my head before I'd ever watch this bilge again.