After all, it runs for three hours. Seems like thirty.

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2004)

I tend to agree with those whose reviews here lean toward the negative. Perhaps The Deer Hunter was so lauded at the time because it was ground breaking in terms of its subject matter--the Vietnam War. Fair enough. But that still doesn't make this a great movie.
The pacing in The Deer Hunter is excruciating at times. Trusty IMDb.com shows Peter Zinner as the editor. Who is this guy? Was he asleep the whole time? That wedding scene should have ran for twenty minutes, not sixty. I don't have a problem with it running for four hours if the length served a purpose, but here it didn't.
And the story? I had expected a realistic depiction of Vietnam-as-hell and the effects of the three men once they returned home. Instead we get some overblown Russian roulette nonsense. Cut out forty minutes from the wedding and add forty minutes of the stinking, horrifying, soul-destroying experiences Vietnam soldiers endured and you'd improve the movie immensely.
Plot holes big enough to fly a Huey through. Other reviewers here cover them very well. How about Christopher Walken's character as the "famous American" who has apparently played Russian roulette dozens, if not hundreds, of times and the odds never catch up with him? Except when De Niro shows up. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Some good performances, especially by Streep. But a real yawner for the most part.