The Deer Hunter (Universal Legacy Series)
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Features
• Color
• Dolby
• DVD-Video
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 23 February, 1979
DVD Release : 06 September, 2005 |
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The Deer Hunter (Universal Legacy Series) description
Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Deer Hunter is simultaneously an audacious directorial conceit and one of the greatest films ever made about friendship and the personal impact of war. Like Apocalypse Now, it's hardly a conventional battle film--the soldier's experience was handled with greater authenticity in Platoon--but its depiction of war on an intimate scale packs a devastatingly dramatic punch. Director Michael Cimino may be manipulating our emotions with masterful skill, but he does it in a way that stirs the soul and pinches our collective nerves with graphic, high-intensity scenes of men under life-threatening duress. Although Russian-roulette gambling games were not a common occurrence during the Vietnam war, they're used here as a metaphor for the futility of the war itself. To the viewer, they become unforgettably intense rites of passage for the best friends--Pennsylvania steelworkers played by Robert De Niro, John Savage, and Oscar winner Christopher Walken--who may survive or perish during their tour through a tropical landscape of hell. Back home, their loved ones must cope with the war's domestic impact, and in doing so they allow The Deer Hunter to achieve a rare combination of epic storytelling and intimate, heart-rending drama. --Jeff Shannon |
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The Deer Hunter (Universal Legacy Series) Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Different Times
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If Jane Fonda had appeared in this picture it couldn't have polarized viewers more down to this very day. The bizarre McGuffin of the movie is the idea that Russian roulette tournament play has captivated all levels of Vietnamese society; all Vietnam in held tight in its addictive grip, and the Vietnamese seem to be very wealthy people with huge basso voices screaming with money to gamble away. In one scene you'll see a well dressed guy with so much money both of his hands are fill and he's holding some in his teeth, jumping up and down flapping his arms like a madman. It has the strange feeling of the surreal, as though it were one step away purposely divorced from reality. How does a contestant like Christopher Walken survive even a few days of such play, much less years? Could there by some tricks to staying alive while playing Russian roulette opposite opponent after opponent? Must be. But the details of the game are the very last thing Cimino has on his mind. It's all about the turn in Walken's head from sane to crazy, and then everything else in the film seems right on.
SPOILER AHEAD.
Oh one more detail. How does Walken get enough money sent over to the USA that it fills a bureau drawer? He's making regular deposits, so it's not just one stray letter that reaches Savage. How does Walken know where Savage is, when no one else at home but his wife has any idea he's not still in Vietnam? I bought the DVD with the expanded and deleted scenes but none of them give much help.
Some people love the score but I found it a little overbearing. However, i was in the audience in the movie theater in Port Jefferson, Long Island, when the film came out, surrounded by Vets wheeled in on their holiday from a nearby veteran's hospital, and the afternoon showing was as quiet as a pin. At the end, everyone who could stand, did. The effect of the film in the 1970s was wellnigh hypnotic. The actors seemed like real people--maybe that's the difference between today and yesterday. Now they seem like "actors" James Lipton would interview on TV, and they each of them seem to be trying to outplay the others, everyone from Streep to De Niro to Walken. John Cazale gives what is possibly the worst performance I've ever seen on the screen. But back then it was a killer. "Riding in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim," sang the Velvets in Sweet Jane, "You know, those were *different times.*" |
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The Deer Hunter (Universal Legacy Series) dvd movie.