The Deer Hunter Reviews

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: A-

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 87/100

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.

Full Review

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

| Original Score: 5/5

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.

Full Review

| Original Score: 4/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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

Full Review

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

| Original Score: 4/5

| Original Score: 4/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

| Original Score: 5/5

| Original Score: 5/5