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The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter (1978)

tomatometer

92

Average Rating: 8.4/10
Reviews Counted: 48
Fresh: 44 | Rotten: 4

Its greatness is blunted by its length and one-sided point of view, but the film's weaknesses are overpowered by Michael Cimino's sympathetic direction and a series of heartbreaking performances from Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken.

86

Average Rating: 7.6/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1

Its greatness is blunted by its length and one-sided point of view, but the film's weaknesses are overpowered by Michael Cimino's sympathetic direction and a series of heartbreaking performances from Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken.

audience

91

liked it
Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 92,711

My Rating

Movie Info

One of several 1978 films dealing with the Vietnam War (including Hal Ashby's Oscar-winning Coming Home), Michael Cimino's epic second feature The Deer Hunter was both renowned for its tough portrayal of the war's effect on American working class steel workers and notorious for its ahistorical use of Russian roulette in the Vietnam sequences. Structured in five sections contrasting home and war, the film opens in Clairton, PA, as Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Stan (John

R,

Drama, Cult Movies

Deric Washburn

Sep 6, 2005

Universal Pictures

Cast

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All Critics (48) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (44) | Rotten (4) | DVD (28)

Is it as good as its advance word and nine Academy Award nominations suggest? Yes.

February 6, 2013 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This excruciatingly violent, three-hour Viet Nam saga demolishes the moral and ideological cliches of an era: it shoves the audience into hell and leaves it stranded without a map.

February 20, 2009 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comment (1)
TIME Magazine
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The film is ambitious and it succeeds on a number of levels and it proves that Cimino is an important director who deserves to be watched carefully.

February 20, 2008 Full Review Source: Variety
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A disgusting account of what the evil Vietnamese did to poor, innocent Americans stands at the center of this Oscar-laden weepie about macho buddies from a small industrial town.

December 13, 2006 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comments (50)
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This is probably one of the few great films of the decade.

January 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comments (2)
Time Out
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It is a heartbreakingly effective fictional machine that evokes the agony of the Vietnam time.

October 23, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Cimino's daring elegy to a war-torn community may be a long haul, but the extravagant running time is a small price to pay for such gut-wrenching performances and Vilmos Zsigmond's rich cinematography.

February 22, 2013 Full Review Source: Total Film
Total Film

The film's depiction of a senseless war remains relevant as long as power-hungry leaders continue to play Russian roulette with the lives of young soldiers.

April 25, 2012 Full Review Source: Creative Loafing
Creative Loafing

Held together with a phenomenal cast, The Deer Hunter is a powerful film but also controversial in many ways.

March 19, 2012 Full Review Source: 7M Pictures
7M Pictures

Largely Ambitious, and not without flaws, Cimino's Oscar winning film is nonetheless an effective chronicle of the impact of Vietnam on a clique of close friends

February 26, 2011 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com
EmanuelLevy.Com

The friendship between the three central characters, as well as their shared association with the men from their small hometown, is truthful and realistic in a way that most guys will find impossible to resist.

April 29, 2009 Full Review Source: Reel Film Reviews
Reel Film Reviews

The first half and second half of the film couldn't be more different but that is the genius behind the film.

August 3, 2008
BDK Reviews

Like an honorable soldier, Cazale gave everything he had for a cause in which he believed.

July 8, 2007 Full Review Source: Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Daily Star

Gauging the shifting moods of the 1970s, this tale of life and love disrupted by war is as arresting as a bullet to the brain.

June 13, 2007 Full Review Source: Film4
Film4

A visceral film that says volumes about the horrors of war and its impact on the lives of typically well adjusted people.

December 13, 2006 Full Review Source: Cinema Sight
Cinema Sight

A simultaneuosly touching and harrowing experience that puts the audience directly in the shoes of one man's experience of Vietnam.

August 4, 2004 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine
Empire Magazine

a hollow movie that only play-acted at meaning; the sucker was us.

April 4, 2004 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | Comments (19)
Filmcritic.com

Draggy and devastating by turns

October 19, 2003
Daily Telegraph

An emotionally devastating meditation on war, masculinity, and the human psyche.

October 1, 2003 Full Review Source: Austin Chronicle
Austin Chronicle

Overlong, but with moments of greatness.

August 6, 2003
New Times

Audience Reviews for The Deer Hunter

Whilst its running length may annoy some, "The Deer Hunter" and Michael Cimino provides viewers with the most gut-wrenching and harrowing examination of the Vietnam War, and most importantly its affects on the lives of individuals.

Set across many years, the film is split into very defined sections or three acts, with one hour given over to the characters and their normal lives back in the US, the second to the war in Vietnam, and the third to the years after the war. After struggling for funding for the three hour epic screenplay, a British studio, EMI, finally got the film rolling and the cast together for this brutal war film.

The film tells the story of three men, and their friends, who take part in the Vietnam war. After one is married, Steven, played as like all the cast beautifully by John Savage, the other two, one a hunter of deer, Robert De Niro, and the other Christopher Walken, they leave for Vietnam and the film follows the war itself and the after effects.

Whilst the screenplay and film itself combine to make a long film, it's well worth the wait. The picture itself is slow, the characters slow moving, and the action steady and events slow one by one. However amongst the slowness of the film, every member of the cast gives a slow but beautiful performance.

Robert De Niro is riveting as the leading member of the gang of three, leading the film in the direction the director set out to do, and capturing the spirit of his horrified and somewhat soul rotted character perfectly. But each member of the cast performs their role wonderfully too, with John Savage's drained character of Steven, reflecting his injuries, and Christopher Walken's sunken and out of reality face and feel.

The supporting cast also give fantastic performances, with Meryl Streep as Linda, in one of her finest roles, and John Cazale in his last ever film role, and perhaps his most provoking one.

The action scenes themselves are not particularly special, but the Russian roulette scenes are what really stand out, with the intensity of the actors and set, stretching across, through the screen, onto any viewer. In the Russian roulette scenes, Cimino shows us his best, as we are literally taken into the middle of the games with the other characters and flung headfirst into uncertainty, panic and desperation.

But the real achievement of this film, is the study in human emotion and character, when such horrors of war are flung upon them, and how it affects not only them, but the people they know and love. At the 1979 Oscars, it was filled with controversy and its portrayal of the war, which had only ended a few years earlier, but in the end, the film's terrible, horrific study of human individual lives following the Vietnam war, will ensure its status as a classic war film and classic motion picture.
June 10, 2012
Adam Kelly

Super Reviewer

The Deer Hunter, could sometimes, present boring scenes, but the tension in this dramatic film, with a great Michael Cimino's direction, original story and unforgettable actings, make this war drama, one of the best movies about the Vietnam war.
September 16, 2011
Lucas Martins

Super Reviewer

    1. Michael: Put an empty chamber in there!
    – Submitted by Jesse K (3 months ago)
    1. Stan: How does it feel to be shot.
    2. Michael: Don't hurt. That's what you wanna know. And how it's been, doing okay.
    3. Stan: Yeah, same thing. Nothing's changed. I'm getting more ass than a toilet seat and Axel here, he's getting fatter than ever.
    – Submitted by Adam O (4 months ago)
    1. Michael: Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain't something else. This is this. From now on, you're on your own.
    – Submitted by Adam O (4 months ago)
    1. Axel: You're so full of shit, you're gonna float away.
    – Submitted by Adam O (4 months ago)
    1. Michael: I feel a lot of distance, and I feel far away.
    – Submitted by David E (6 months ago)
    1. Michael: [holding a bullet] Stanley, see this? This is this! This ain't something else. This is this. From now on, you're on your own.
    – Submitted by David E (6 months ago)

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Foreign Titles

  • Voyage au bout de l'enfer (FR)
  • El cazador (ES)
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