The Deer Hunter – A review
iView Author: Skanda Narayanan (Pune, India)
Email: skandarks(at)gmail(dot)com
The Deer Hunter – A review
For a long time, I have been wanting to start my old habit of reviewing movies. For various reasons (laziness, being the primary reason) I have not been able to start. Finally, yesterday I rented a couple of DVDs and here I am with the review of one of the two movies.
After watching the movie, the first thought that comes to my mind is, Pheww – it’s a looooong movie!!! The movie runs for close to 3 hours and it is long by any standards. That I felt this way about the length does not mean the movie was not engaging. The movie is filled with many great scenes, very interesting performances, good locales and great music.
The Deer Hunter is the story of a few friends from Pennsylvania who decide to go to Vietnam war, and how the war changes their lives. There are 5 guys and three of them, Mike (Robert De Niro), Nicky (Christopher Walken), and Steven (John Savage) go to Vietnam. The movie starts with these guys coming out of their jobs in what looks like a huge steel factory. Steven is getting married before he goes to Vietnam, and the guys are getting ready for the marriage.
It seems like Steven’s mother has complaints about the marriage. At this point, the movie is interspersed with scenes that show the marriage party being setup, the guys at the bar, the bride getting dressed, the church being arranged and so on. These scenes are shown to a good detail, and so is the marriage ceremony and the subsequent party. We also see Linda (Meryl Streep) who has an abusive father who gets drunk and keeps hitting her. Linda is the bride’s maid and Nicky is the best man. In the course of marriage scenes and the party, we learn a good deal about all the characters introduced. Linda is Nicky’s girl, and Mike has an eye for her. We see Mike’s shy nature with women and him acting as a natural leader of the gang. Mike and Nicky share a deep friendship. Nicky is not sure he is going to come back from Vietnam. We get a sense that something serious is going to happen as the movie progresses.
The next day, the friends go for deer hunting. Mike is a natural and he is very serious about hunting. Most of the time, he get’s a deer with his first shot. These scenes are breath taking with some great western classical choruses as the background score. From here, without any scenes of good byes, we are abruptly taken to Vietnam where Mike, Nicky and Steven are at the war front and are taken hostages.
We are shown a game where two hostages are asked to sit in front of each other and a gun with a single bullet placed in between them. People around bet on who would die, as each one has a go at himself with the gun. These scenes psyche you out. Eventually, the friends escape, Steven looses his legs in that process, Nicky and Mike get separated, and when they meet again in saigon, we see that the same game is being played by underground betting mafia for very high stakes. Nick gets completely caught up in the game and Mike returns to the USA. Mike catches up with Linda, who is expecting Nick’s safe arrival. We come to know through the other friends that Steven is back but he is in a veteran’s hospital. From here on, Mike becomes the guy who moves the story forward. He gets close to Linda, meets Steven and gets him back from the hospital, and goes to Vietnam to get Nicky back. What happens to Nicky forms the rest of the story.
The story may be too long to write about, but there are so many good reasons for the movie winning five oscars. To start with, the acting is excellent. Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken both have dream roles which they have played to perfection. Meryl Streep as Linda is a treat to watch, as always. Two other aspects of the movie that should be mentioned are the music and camera. The background score stands out in the deer hunting scenes, marriage and party scenes, and the final few moments. As for the camera, it stands as an observer, without trying to intrude on anything, capturing only things that make sense to the story.
This is one such movie which is way to difficult to tell as a story to someone, but beautiful as cinema. Watch it with, be prepared to sit through it and it will be rewarding.
Tags: Christopher Walken, Deer hunter review, John Savage, robert de niro
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you tell off the whole story leaving the last fifteen minutes and then say, ‘What happens to Nicky forms the rest of the story.’ funny!
This is not a ‘review’. You are just telling the whole story of the movie without providing any insights. A review means telling about why you liked (or disliked) a movie and NOT just telling the story. This is bad form. You have spoiled it for people who would have wanted to see the movie.
Minor spoilers can’t be avoided in a review but the main purpose of a review is to highlight moments or aspects that are interesting, bring out tangential connections that are not obvious at first glance, give a sense of the whole movie-watching experience to the reader. It is NOT reciting a mugged up chain of sequences like this happens, then that happens, after that this happens, after this that happens, then this happens, then that happens, then…gawd!
Dear PFC editors: Kindly filter articles that in the guise of being ‘reviews’ are just extended spoilers.