Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8136 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-08-04
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: PAL, Special Edition, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French, Russian, Vietnamese
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 176 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Deer Hunter is an expansive portrait of friendship in a Pennsylvania steel town, and of the effects of the Vietnam War. Led by the trio of Robert De Niro, John Savage and Christopher Walken (who won a supporting actor Oscar), the first hour is dominated by an engrossing Russian Orthodox wedding and reception. When the drama moves overseas it switches from anthropologically realistic documentation of a community's rituals to highly controversial and still shocking Russian Roulette scenes, symbolising the random horror of war. Unforgettable as they are, the Vietnam sequences occupy less than a third of the three-hour running time; defying movie convention The Deer Hunter is fundamentally a before-and-after ensemble character study anchored by De Niro's great performance.

Although it was the first serious Hollywood feature to address the Vietnam War, the plausibility of some of the later plot developments raises awkward questions. But the film remains powerfully effective, its deliberate pace, naturalistic overlapping dialogue and unflinching seriousness marking it very much a product of the 1970s. With nine Oscar nominations and five wins, including Best Picture and Director, it's a cinematic landmark that stands the test time, almost incidentally setting Meryl Streep on the road to superstardom in her first leading role.

On the DVD: The Deer Hunter: Special Edition has the film on the first disc with a serious yet amiable Region 2 exclusive discussion track between director Michael Cimino and critic SX Finnie. The picture is anamorphically enhanced at 2.35:1, and perfectly reproduces Vilmos Zsigmond's deliberately desaturated, necessarily grainy cinematography. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack clearly reveals the mono original, being largely focused on the centre speaker and while it does a good job, some of the choral music does sound harsh. Dialogue is sometimes indecipherable, but that's due to the naturalistic nature of the original sound recording and mixing.

Disc 2 offers excellent new interviews with Jon Savage (15 mins), Vilmos Zsigmond (15 mins) and Michael Cimino (23 mins). Also included is the original trailer (anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1), a routine photo gallery and a DVD version of the original press brochure. There's no trace of the 40 minutes of deleted material referred to by Cimino, but this presentation is still an object lesson in how quality of extras triumphs over quantity. --Gary S Dalkin

Special Features
English
Region 2

Synopsis
This epic look at the Vietnam War and its effects told through the lives of a tight knit group of friends from a Pennsylvania town was Michael Cimino's second film and established him in the pantheon of American directors. Complex and emotionally raw performances from Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep earned each an Academy Award nomination, and Christopher Walken's portrayal of Nick, who survives capture but is unable to escape its trauma, is a tour de force that earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. With a keen eye for nuance and a carefully structured script, Cimino interweaves the rituals great and small that make up the lives of his characters, creating a poignant sense of what remained constant and what was forever changed by their experience of the war.

Customer Reviews

God bless America?
De Nrio (Michael) and Walken (Nick) are absolutely outstanding in this film and their friendship, and similarly love for the same women, grounds the film as one of the best dramas about war/friendship/community ever made. Cimino has produced a film that is so easy to immerse yourself in and get close to the characters, that it at times seems to transcend fiction and present itself as a historical documentary about the impact the Vietnam War had on America. However, war is not the main theme of this film; rather it is used to show the impact it has on friends, loved ones and close-knit communities. By the end of this powerful epic the viewer is left in no doubt that attempting to conquer other countries is a futile and devastatingly pointless act. It is also disappointingly apparent that films simply ain't made like this anymore and it is a true cinematic great that provides an alternative and authentic snapshot of American society in the 1970s.

Far too long
So, here is the - ahem - classic film that won five - five!!! - Academy awards in 1978. It must have been a bad year for films because this is not a bona fide classic (and it is far too long).

Structured in five sections contrasting home and war, the film opens in PA, as Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Stan (John Cazale, in his last film- dying of cancer) celebrate the wedding of their friend Steve (John Savage) and go on a final deer hunt before the men leave for Vietnam. Mike treats hunting as a test of skill, lecturing Stan about the value of "one shot" deer slaying and brushing off Nick's urgings to appreciate nature's beauty. As Mike ruminates post-hunt, the film cuts to the horror of Vietnam, where the men are captured by Vietcong soldiers who force Mike and Nick to play Russian roulette for the V.C.'s amusement. Mike turns the game to his advantage so they can escape captivity, but the men are permanently scarred by the episode.


Steve loses his legs; Nick vanishes in the Saigon Russian roulette parlors. Mike returns home alone a changed man, as he rejects the killing of the deer hunt and finds solace with Nick's old girlfriend Linda (Meryl Streep). Disgusted by the antics of his male cohorts at home, Mike decides to bring Steve back from a veterans' hospital, and he returns to Saigon to find Nick. As Saigon falls, Mike discovers how far gone Nick is; the survivors gather for a funeral breakfast, singing an impromptu rendition of "God Bless America."


One of several 1978 films dealing with the Vietnam War (including Hal Ashby's Oscar-winning Coming Home), Michael Cimino's 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. For me cinema is all about mellifluous dialogue, intricate framing, a good soundtrack and good acting on top of a great story. This movie experiment was a sucess on almost all counts apart from its length. Cimino went onto direct the excremental Heavens Gate after this, and he subsequently sank UA studios with its poor bx office performance. Selah.


On a funny note, its hilarious that the Americans made movies like DEER HUNTER. In the same year, us Brits, released THE WILD GEESE - a throwback to the all-star me-on-a-mission genre of the 1960s delivers a silly boy's own adventure thanks mainly to the scenery-muching hambones (Richard Harris, R. Burton, R.Moore and Hardy Kruger) cast as the eponymous squad of cigar chomping, whiskey swilling mercenaries. Long live the British film industry. Ha ha...
Bee Clarke

Sophisticated
From the very first scenes it is artificial; the car scraping by the lorry, the beer sprayed on the pool table - these are trivial things but it is precisely tiny details that make a thing credible or not.

Real men who do real work don't destroy their vehicles or their club, they relax, and have a good time *because* they have been working.

Yobs (or excited actors) who have been lying in bed all day might act this way.

The first rule of war is "Never put a loaded weapon in the hands of the enemy." This film prefers to ignore it - it shows hardened Viet cong doing just that and *that* is how the hero escapes!

But not before trying to shoot himself first with the same weapon (ostensibly to "improve" the odds - it is Russian roulette).

We are expected to believe that Russian roulette is an exciting betting game, many people are shouting, jumping up and down and laying bets. Another of our heroes has actually become very good at it, presumably by playing it more.

The "finale" has both our heros playing each other at Russian roulette, one to save the other from himself?


I found this hilarious but I don't think that was the film's intention; the final scene shows everyone around the family table weeping.

That was the only (unintentional) humour in the film. To try and maintain dramatic effect there is no humour in it.

Here is another example of dumb script writing: the Deer Hunter, back from the war, has a argument with his old friend (who was not in the war) so he grabs a revolver, puts a slug in it, spins the chamber and points it at his old friend's head and pulls the trigger. (all this is done in high rage). If he was really angry (instead of actor-faking it) why not casually, in a dead calm manner, put the gun to his own head instead and unblinkingly squeeze the trigger?

I suffered three boring hours of this film and it seemed like four. It is sophisticated nonsense.