An incredibly visual and realistic story of the war and its effects on those who served..

Rating: 10/10 (21 October 2005)

Michael(Robert De Niro), Nick(Christopher Walken) and Steven(John Savage) join the battle in Vietnam together leaving their friends and lovers in their small town in Pennsylvania. While fighting, they experience horrors unimaginable and leave Vietnam traumatized beyond reason.
With such an amazing cast, it's hard to believe that The Deer Hunter could fail as a film. But nobody could have expected that this could have been one of the greatest war movies ever made. With gripping visual images, The Deer Hunter took audiences to an unknown place where fiction meets reality.
The Deer Hunter is set in a some-what Godfather tone. The movie is dark but light-hearted at times. The main character is De Niro, its exceedingly violent for it's time, and it even has a time-consuming wedding scene in the beginning. This is done very well and I must give a complement to Michael Cimino for the great writing as well. It may be a little slow at times but it makes the story flow and lets the camera-work shine.
The main theme of this movie is a game of roulette that the prisoners are made to play while being kept prisoners in Vietnam. The characters are made to pull the trigger on a gun at their head repeatedly until being killed as the Vietnamese gambled on them. Their courage is shown by them taking their own lives instead of letting the enemies execute them as well as the massive amount of hysteria it caused from pulling a gun to one's head. Overall, the movie is an all-around great movie that includes a great cast and convincing acting.
I highly recommend this movie.