The Deer Hunter

Plot synopsis:
=== Act I ===
In Clairton, a small working class town in western Pennsylvania, in late 1967, Russian-American steel workers Michael "Mike" Vronsky (Robert De Niro), Steven Pushkov (John Savage), and Nikanor "Nick" Chevotarevich (Christopher Walken), with the support of their friends and co-workers Stan (John Cazale) and Peter "Axel" Axelrod (Chuck Aspegren) and local bar owner and friend John Welsh (George Dzundza), prepare for two rites of passage: marriage and military service. The opening scenes set the traits of the three main characters. Mike is the no-nonsense, serious, but unassuming leader; Steven the loving, groom-to-be, pecked-at by his mother; and Nick the quiet, introspective man who loves deer hunting because, he likes "…the trees…the way the trees are". The recurring theme of hunting with "one shot", which is how Mike prefers to take down a deer, is introduced.
Before the trio ships out, Steven and his girlfriend Angela (Rutanya Alda), who is pregnant by another man, but loved by Steven nonetheless, marry in a Russian Orthodox wedding. In the meantime, Mike works to control his feelings for Nick's girlfriend Linda (Meryl Streep). At the wedding reception held at the local VFW hall, the guys drink, dance, sing, and enjoy the festivities, but then notice a soldier in a U.S. Army Special Forces uniform. Mike attempts to ask what Vietnam is like, but the soldier ignores him. After Mike explains that he, Steven, and Nick are going to Vietnam, the Green Beret raises his glass and says "fuck it". After being restrained by the others from starting a fight, Mike goes back to the bar and, in a mocking jest to the soldier, raises his glass and toasts him with "fuck it". The soldier then glances over at Mike and grins.
Later, Steven and Angela drink from conjoined goblets, a traditional part of the Orthodox wedding ceremony. It is believed that if they drink without spilling any wine, they will have good luck for life. Two drops of blood-red wine unknowingly spill on her wedding gown. After Linda catches the bride's bouquet, Nick asks her to marry him, and she agrees. Later that night, a drunken Mike runs through the town, stripping himself naked along the way. After Nick chases him down, he begs Mike not to leave him "over there" if anything happens in combat. The next day, Mike, Nick, Stan, John, and Axel go deer hunting one last time. Mike is exasperated by his friends, especially Stan, who drinks and clowns, showing little respect for the ritual of hunting, which to Mike is a nearly sacred experience. Only Nick understands Mike's attitude, but he is more indulgent toward his friends. Mike goes hunting afterwards and kills a deer with one, clean shot.
Act one finishes with the friends arriving back at Welsh's bar, with Michael's deer strapped to the hood of the car. They enter rambunctiously, spraying beers over each other and singing loudly. Welsh then makes his way to a piano and begins playing methodically as the others sit quietly. They sit in silence, strewn all over the bar, as their friend plays Chopin's Nocturne No. 6 Op. 15-3, a peaceful, yet ominous melody.
=== Act II ===
The film then jumps abruptly to war-torn Vietnam, where U.S. helicopters attack a Communist-occupied village with napalm. A North Vietnamese soldier throws a stick grenade into a hiding place full of civilians. An unconscious Mike (now a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army Special Forces) wakes up to see the NVA soldier shoot a woman carrying a baby. Mike kills him with a flamethrower. Meanwhile, a unit of UH-1 "Huey" helicopters drops off several U.S. infantrymen, Nick and Steven among them. Mike, Steven, and Nick unexpectedly find each other just before they are captured and held together in a riverside prisoner of war camp with other U.S. Army and ARVN prisoners. For entertainment, the sadistic guards force their prisoners to play Russian roulette and gamble on the outcome. All three friends are forced to play. Steven plays against Mike, who offers moral support, but Steven breaks down and points the gun upwards whilst pulling the trigger, grazing himself with the bullet when it discharges. As punishment, the guards put him into an underwater cage full of rats and the bodies of others who earlier faced the same fate. Mike and Nick hatch a plan to escape by playing against each other, with Mike convincing the guards to let them play Russian roulette with three bullets in the gun. After a tense match, they kill their captors and escape.
Mike earlier argued with Nick about whether or not Steven could be saved, but after killing their captors, he rescues Steven. The three float downriver on a tree branch. An American helicopter finds them, but only Nick is able to climb aboard. The weakened Steven falls back into the water, and Mike plunges in the water to rescue him. Mike helps Steven to reach the river bank, but Steven's legs are broken, so Mike carries him through the jungle to friendly lines. Approaching a caravan of locals escaping the war zone, Mike stops a South Vietnamese military truck and places the wounded Steven on it, asking the soldiers to take care of him.
Nick, who is psychologically damaged, recuperates in a military hospital in Saigon with no knowledge on the status of his friends. After being released, he goes AWOL and aimlessly stumbles through the red-light district at night. At one point, he encounters Julien Grinda, a champagne-drinking, friendly Frenchman, outside a gambling den where men play Russian roulette for money. Grinda entices the reluctant Nick to participate and leads him into the den. Mike is present in the den, watching the game, but the two friends do not notice each other at first. When Mike does see Nick, he is unable to get his attention. When Nick is introduced into the game, he grabs the gun, fires it at the current contestant, and then again at his own temple, causing the audience to riot in protest. Grinda hustles Nick outside to his car to escape the angry mob. Mike cannot catch up with Nick and Grinda as they speed away.
=== Act III ===
Back in the U.S., Mike arrives home but maintains a low profile. While en route home, he tells a cab driver to drive past the house where all his friends are assembled with a large banner outside, as he is embarrassed by the fuss Linda and the others have made. He visits Linda the following day and grows close to her, but only because of the friend they both think they have lost. Mike eventually learns about Angela, whom he goes to visit at the home of Steven's mother. Angela is apathetic and barely responsive. When asked by Mike about Steven's whereabouts, she writes a phone number on a scrap of paper, which leads Mike to the local veterans' hospital where Steven has been for several months. Mike goes hunting with Axel, John, and Stan one more time, and after tracking a deer across the woods, takes his one shot but pulls the rifle up and fires into the air. He then sits on a rock escarpment and yells out, "OK?", which echoes back at him from the opposing rock faces leading down to the river, signifying his fight with his mental demons over losing Steven and Nick. He also berates Stan for carrying around a small revolver and waving it around, not realizing it is still loaded. Mike visits Steven, who has lost both of his legs and is partially paralyzed. Steven reveals that someone in Saigon has been mailing large amounts of money to him, and Mike is convinced that it is Nick. Mike brings a reluctant Steven home to Angela and then travels to Saigon just before its fall in 1975.
He tracks down Grinda, who has made a lot of money from the Russian roulette-playing Nick. He finds Nick in a crowded gambling club, but Nick appears to have no recollection of his friends or his home in Pennsylvania. Mike enters himself in a game of Russian roulette against Nick, hoping to jog Nick's memory and persuade him to come home, but Nick's mind is gone. To keep him from taking another turn, Mike grabs Nick's arms, which are covered in scars (implied to be heroin tracks). At the last moment, after Mike reminds Nick of their hunting trips together, he finally breaks through, and Nick recognizes Mike and smiles. Nick then tells Mike, "one shot", raises the gun to his temple, and pulls the trigger. The round is in the gun's top chamber, and Nick kills himself. Horrified, Mike tries reviving him, but to no avail.
=== Epilogue ===
Back home in 1975, the friends have gathered for Nick's funeral, whom Mike has brought home, staying good to his promise. The film ends with everyone at John's bar, singing "God Bless America". Mike toasts in Nick's honor.

Tags: boring, murder, realism, cult, violence, atmospheric, psychedelic, suspenseful

Review:
This is one of the very few post-war Hollywood films that shows a sincere reverence for the lives of small town Americans.After seeing it in a very high quality theater on its initial release, I walked out thinking it was easily one of the best movies I had ever seen - and that I never wanted to see it again.
I don't want to see it again...but I want you to see it.Even now, the Russian Roulette scene (in context, people: watch all that comes before it first) is the single most intense sequence I've seen; it makes the end of "Reservoir Dogs" seem like a cartoon.
That's why the scenes all revolve around frivolity and seemingly senseless boyish behavior; it creates such a stark contrast to the devastated characters of the three who went to war (and the relatively unaffected personalities of those who stayed behind, like Stanley).The strong points of the film are the outstanding performances of nearly every actor in the movie.
The Deer Hunter (1978) This is an epic war drama film about a trio of steelworkers whose lives are changed forever after they fight in the Vietnam War. The cast includes Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, and George Dzundza.
"The Deer Hunter" is not a film about the Vietnam war, as it is wrongly said in many cases."The Deer Hunter" is a film tells the story of 3 friends within about 5-6 years, during which their friendship is repeatedly put to the test.It is primarily a picture of the contemporary life of a group of people around 30 living in a small American town during the Vietnam war.The first hour of the film portrays the every day life of three friends Mike (De Niro), Steven (Savage) and Nick (Walken), who look forward to Steve's wedding but at the same time have to prepare for their commitment in Vietnam.
Despite this conflict the characters don't show their concerns to their environment.Particularly Nick is worried about him and his friends leaving his home town and perhaps never coming back, but he only tells his best friend Mike of his thoughts, who is much more resolute and sees their engagement as a strong masculine act.Cimino manages to show the simple irrationality of young men, going to a senseless war from which they might never return for the only purpose of glory and approval, and abandoning their settled and happy life for it.
This passage perfectly underlines the contrast and the inexplicability of the three men's actions.Although the passage that is set in Vietnam is only about one third of the whole film long, the war is omnipresent at any time, which is probably the best benefit of the whole film, Cimino does not need to bomb the spectator with pictures of crying children, mutilated soldiers or desert battlefields in order to illustrate the cruelty of war.
The changed behavior of all characters after the friends' returns tell more about wars' capability of changing someone's life, than anything else.And the fact that the many dreams that these three friends had before they went to Vietnam didn't come true, because of their longing for recognition by becoming an acclaimed veteran can even pluck your heartstrings.Cimino's great directing and the cast's awesome acting provide for a touching and honest drama about the friendship of a group of young men, that is destroyed by the Vietnam war..
Of the first two American films about the Vietnam war with a priceless artistic weight, "the Deer Hunter" wins hands down over "Apocalypse Now" (1979) although Francis Ford Coppola's work is very potent too.But would it be judicious to pigeonhole Michael Cimino's work in the category of the war movie?
Unlike Coppola's visual nightmare, only the central part takes place in Vietnam and the filmmaker barely shoots one fight sequence before Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Stevie (John Savage) are prisoners of the enemy and are forced to play Russian roulette in the notorious unbearable scene.
Rather than shooting a political film, Cimino chose to represent us the deadly impact this nightmarish war had on an American community whose hopes and values disappeared.Dividing his work in three parts: before, during, after and thanks to symbolical images, scenes or even eloquent details, Cimino used and honed his own cinematographic language to set out his stalls and the result can only command respect and admiration.
This boring, overlong, implausible excuse for a story has psyched out a surprising number of people, thanks to a strong cast (Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken), phony but emotionally exploitive material, and American audiences desperate to demonize the winners of the Vietnam war.Any scenes that might have shown combat, snipers, or something that could have really happened in Vietnam are jarringly missing - it practically cuts from Pennsylvania to a POW camp.
The Deer Hunter is a powerful film about how war effects everybody, not just the soldiers involved in it.The cast is terrific!
The beginning drags on and on, then when the characters are finally in Viet Nam, the scene is ludicrous.For a movie that is suppose to show the effects of war on a group of people living in a small steel mill town, it fails miserably.Seems to me the character development was very weak to begin with, and just gets weaker as it goes.
I figured it was a lost cause to continue, and I had already wasted over 2 hours of my life watching this crap.Aside from being painfully boring, with no real character development, ludicrous war scenes, a complete failure to get any point across, and totally non-rational events, I guess it was OK.
The Deer Hunter is a masterpiece of life among a community before and after three friends get drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. The tragic events that take place in the jungles and the adjustment back into the drinking and hunting life of steel workers in Pittsburgh shook my life forever.
At first, I admit, I was a little bored because the beginning is a little long and felt unnecessary, but then I realized later in the film how much that developed the characters and understood their friendships and how they relate.Robert De Niro seems to be the strongest one of the group, his name is Mike.
hmmm...the wedding scene is almost unbearable; 10 minutes would have been more than enough; I guess it was the editor's day off ?the plot is SO predictable and the 'hunter motif' is SO cheap; by the way, shooting animals really sucks, so maybe it's a good thing Mike suffers from a Vietnam trauma in the end.
Because of this, I went into this film with high expectations and was sorely disappointed with what I had seen."The Deer Hunter" is one of those films that has one (maybe two) fantastic scenes and the rest of the picture is complete rubbish.
However, this one scene cannot cover the other, various issues that plague the film such as meandering plot, useless and overlong (way overlong) wedding scene, annoying characters, unsatisfying ending, choppy editing (Oscar for Best Film Editing, seriously?), and unwarranted three hour run-time.
I'm actually annoyed I've wasted 3 hours of my day watching this trash.I recall attempting to watch the film in the past and never getting to the end, I've now remembered why, it's rubbish.Maybe in America it might have more impact, but that doesn't stop it being boring.There are many other films out there that attempt this type of war/character change style and do it much better, without making you want to put a gun to head..
Obviously made by someone that has never been in the military much less spent a year in Nam. The only film to ever capture the character of the Vietnam conflict is Apocalypse Now, the rest is pretty much Hollywood war movie product..
The Deer Hunter claims to be a film about war, and to believe the hype you might think it was a good one.
An obsession with a Russian Roulette theme doesn't make a good movie, and that (apart from some fair acting when dealing with the truly terrible script) is about all the Deer Hunter has.
When DeNiro's character manages to get back into Vietnam via a copter ride to US Embassy roof DURING the American evacuation?)The worst part however is watching every cog turn while a group of young method actors, mostly from rather artsy East Coast backgrounds and educations, try like crazy to BE the down-trodden denizens of a Pennsylvania mining town.
Back in Pennsylvania Michael realises the extent to which the war has not only affected him but devastated the lives of his friends in different ways.I have seen this film several times and I'll admit that I always assume that it is a classic film mainly because I saw it twice when I was in my early teens and was blown away by parts of it.
Going past that to deeper themes I always feel that the film doesn't manage to be as deep as it thinks it is, so I try not to linger too long on these.The breakdown of the film gives significantly more time to events in the home town rather than Vietnam.
The time in Vietnam is quite short but very memorable (many people who have never seen the film will still know these scenes) and the final hour or so of the film is moving even if it takes things to an extreme to make it's point.The cast make the film work as well, if not more, than the material itself.
Watching the lives of people changed in a Pennsylvania Steel Town after the Vietnam War. Makes for an interesting movie.
Michael Cimino directs this long character study & war picture that follows a group of friends from a wedding, to a deer hunting trip, to finally the Vietnam war and its aftermath.
Over three hour film details their lives before & after the war, on both the men and their families.Fine cast includes Robert De Nero, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep, who all deliver heartfelt and believable performances, but the trouble is that the extended POW sequence involving Russian Roulette just feels so bizarre and extreme, that I had a hard time buying it, especially when one of the characters becomes obsessed with it after their ordeal is over.
It could have been cut much shorter without losing any of its effect, and that time could have been used to give greater insight into the life of the town and the relationships between Walken, DeNiro, Streep et al.So the wedding finally ends, and almost instantly we're plunged into Vietnam and into "the scene." I didn't clock it, but I would bet that the wedding lasted almost as long or longer than their entire actual war experience.
If you hadn't fallen asleep by this stage you would have completely missed it.The thing that sticks out most in my mind is the fact that most of the characters spent a lot of time getting drunk.....a bunch of grown men behaving like adolescents.Without the Russian Roulette scenes this film would be completely unremarkable.
Michael became so disgusted and angry with killing that when out hunting he couldn't even lift his rifle to aim at and shoot a deer back home in Penn., a sport which he used to enjoy more then anything else.Going back to "Nam" in the spring of 1975 as the US supported South Vietnamese government was on the brink of being overthrown, with what little US personnel left at the US embassy in Saigon about to be air-lifted out of the country, Michael finds Nick playing for high stakes, his life, the brutal and inhuman game that took away his sanity while being held captive by the Vietcong years ago; Russian Roulette.
This time, like Michael always said, "One shot is what It's all about" and it was that one and last shot or bullet that eventually did Nick in.One of the best movies about war ever made that shows it for what it is "Hell on Earth" with a young, 28 year old, and at the time unknown Meryl Streep as Nick's, and and now Michael, long suffering girlfriend Linda.
The actors go a long way toward diverting attention from the film's awkward vacuousness, by giving false and short-lived impressions of character and narrative, but this falls apart whenever the filmmaker attempts to make anything "happen" narrative-wise.De Niro, Walken and company deserve some recognition for some good acting, albeit for such a misguided cause.
After the first 10 minutes, the boredom of the plot kicked in plus the never-ending wedding!Summary: The story revolves around 3 friends, Mike, Nick and Steven, who have enlisted themselves and are on their way to Vietnam to fight the war.
It seemed to me the most real portrait of the Vietnam War I've seen, and I now appreciate movies like Full Metal Jacket which didn't resonate prior to seeing the Deer Hunter.
I found the first hour or so slow, the last hour and forty minutes pretty good, but the best part of the entire film was the Russian Roulette scene.
Although this movie does not concentrate on the war as much as e.g. Saving Private Ryan, I must say that the scenes from Vietnam in this film, the psychological as well as the physical torture, is much more disturbing and awful to me than the whole first half hour of SPR.
Of course that is not to say anything about the quality of the acting and filming of the movie, just the content.If you want to see something that says more about the subject than any other that I know of see, "Dear Mom: Letters Home from Vietnam."  The Deer Hunter is simply a "script-writer" version of what the writer imagined the war was like.
Every seen was dragged out way to long (I.E. wedding) and the dialogue was horrible, every time people got together they said, "How are you" or "How have you been." And these lines are said right after someone gets back from War or they see there long lost friend.This is all I have to say GO OUT AND WATCH THE MOVIE and see for yourself how bad a movie can get with age..
the first hour of the film could have easily been 20 minutes.there arnt vietnam scenes in the movie besides the russian roulette scene (which i admit was well done), and it was just all around boring.
Despite the fact that the first act of the film might've been trimmed to better effect, The Deer Hunter nonetheless remains one of the finest war dramas.
Coming soon after the United States had suffered a humiliating defeat trying to prop up a corrupt minority government in Vietnam and the unemployment rate in the "rust belt" was making national news, rising but fiscally uncontrolled director Michael Cimino assembled some of the greatest of the new generation of university trained actors for what amounts to a phony artistic commercial pandering to the great middle American "silent majority" who didn't know (and didn't care) how the world could have turned against them.Because the story seemed "edgy" with extreme, seemingly unmotivated violence (the Vietnam torture and "Russian Roulette" scenes are all many of its fans remember from the film) and justly flaunted the layered performances which Cimino drew from his superb cast and cinematographer, many if not most critics (and the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences) hailed it as a major work of art.
I believe the movie makes the point that the Vietnam War had some bad effect on the people who fought it.
Ironic also because one of the cast member, John Cazale who played one of the friends in Clairton and best remembered for being Freddo Corleone in The Godfather also was dying of cancer while the film was being shot.Although I find it a bit too coincidental that three men from the same small town who join the Army would have the exact same service record, The Deer Hunter isn't really about the Vietnam War. It's about war and what it can do those that serve and to those around them.And this review is dedicated to those that serve..
The Deer Hunter (1978) Another pseudo-war movie, only this time the action revolves around the conflict in Vietnam.
When adding this performance to her body of work, audiences can see a string of unforgettable characterizations that made her, arguably, America's greatest living and working actress.Starring Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken among others, The Deer Hunter, along with another Vietnam movie made the following year, Apocalypse Now, remains one of the greatest war films ever made.
Meryl Streep also shines as Nicks' girlfriend, distraught when for a period of time he seems to disappear into thin air.As has been said, this is not really a film *about* the Vietnam War, and one shouldn't let their political inclinations affect the way they view what is ultimately an interesting character study.
The Deer Hunter takes place mostly in Pennsylvania and is about how the US-Vietnam war effects a small industrial town.
Although the film is over 3 hours long I feel that it is worth the time that it takes to watch it since there are so much depth and so many interesting scenes.
In `The Deer Hunter', Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro play friends from a small town in Pennsylvania who get sent to Vietnam, where they experience horrifying moments together.
I ended up watching it many in times in a short period as I fell in love with the piece and still view the movie regularly.The story is about three men from Pennsylvania who go to fight in the Vietnam War and who's lives are forever changed by their experience.