Overly emotional, but effective

Rating: 7/10 (24 July 2008)

By the end of this very long film, I felt quite a bit emotionally drained and somewhat manipulated. Although I feel like it contained some really great performances, from everyone really including the supporting cast (especially George Dzundza and John Savage) but especially De Niro, Walken and Streep, ultimately I think the film was a bit heavy-handed and at times improbable. The details of the Vietnamese POW camp feel exaggerated, although the two scenes with Russian roulette were very powerful. It was really odd that De Niro could just walk back into Saigon though at that point.
What I liked best about the movie was the way De Niro's performance changed so subtly in the parts of the movie when he returns home after the war. He conveys a totally different state of mind -- again the film hammers the point home more than it really needs to by including that whole scene with him deliberately missing the stag he's tracking. De Niro's acting alone would suffice, I've rarely seen him stronger. Same with Walken, he really was excellent in this movie especially at the end when he seems almost literally like a ghost.
Was the ending supposed to be satirical? I don't think so but it was a little over the top with them all singing "God Bless America." I just couldn't buy it.
One thing that I felt was that it is possible to see the movie as De Niro's character being in love with Walken's. At the end he tells him "I love you", (SPOILERS) similar to Sam Fuller's "I Shot Jesse James." I think that he and the Streep character were basically in love with the same man.