Great, But Missed Its Mark on Me

Rating: 8/10 (7 May 2010)

This film had long intrigued me, mostly because of Christopher Walken and somewhat because of Robert DeNiro. But sadly, despite the film's greatness, it just did not hit me in the gut. I'm going to respond to another viewer's thoughts:
"I think the reason most people don't like this movie is that it is unnecessarily long... I could have done without the hour long wedding scene, but the reason I really don't like it is that it served little purpose... The Godfather wedding is almost as long, but it deeply informs you about the characters... watching the Deer Hunter wedding was like watching someone's wedding video, and it didn't tell you much about the characters... there are many scenes like this in this movie"
Now, I tend to agree. The wedding, which takes up like the first third of the film, was not an effective way to get me to care about the characters. In fact, it caused me to get bored early on, and the war scenes had to un-bore me. Luckily, those are really good. But yes, the film as a whole is long for no good reason, and rather than being suspenseful, becomes tedious. An edit cutting 20-30 minutes out would have done wonders for me.
And don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with long films. Three hours is fine, sometimes even four hours ("Das Boot" and "Lawrence of Arabia") is enjoyable. This one just didn't live up to the reputation, and I don't think it allowed DeNiro or Walken to shine. I expect some day this film will fade from "classic" to "obscure".