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| A praise-stressing, unusual and exciting poster for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter |
QUICK REVIEW:
Three American steelworkers and their trials before and after their service in the Vietnam War.
Deer Hunter is a great war drama epic. But its all-pervading director Michael Cimino (Year of the Dragon (1985)) is no Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West/C'era una Volta il West (1968)), meaning; he's no master of the epic, and Deer Hunter is ultimately too loosely edited (by Peter Zinner (The Godfather: Part II (1974)), who nevertheless won an Oscar for his job), which is no doubt Cimino's own fault, as he did everything in his power to keep it as long as possible. (It runs 183 minutes.) - Perhaps Deer Hunter is a precursor of his fatal eruption of megalomania on his following western epic, Heaven's Gate (1980), which, infamously, bankrupted its studio United Artists.
Robert De Niro (Casino (1995)) and Christopher Walken (A Late Quartet (2012)), who won his only Oscar to date for his supporting performance, are both eminent in this film, and Stanley Myers' (A Severed Head (1970)) somewhat under-appreciated score is beautiful.
Deer Hunter, written by Deric Washburne (Extreme Prejudice (1987)), tackles its taboo (at the time) topic of the US Vietnam War in an all-together different way from Francis Ford Coppola's soon following Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now (1979)): Deer Hunter is a more social-realistic portrait that also inhabits symbolism (like the controversial Russian roulette scenes that are a part of the film, because it is based on a script about Russian roulette in Las Vegas, not because Russian roulette war known to have been a widespread practice in the Vietnam War), whereas Apocalypse is a doomsday-themed journey into the dark pits of man's soul. Though I think Coppola's film is superior among the two, The Deer Hunter is certainly also a great film. - As well as a very controversial and disputed film, both from a production and a public standpoint, as you can read about in its lengthy, interesting Wikipedia page here.
Related review:
Apocalypse Now (1979) redux version - The horror of war
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| Christopher Walken in a pivotal scene from Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter |
An original trailer for the film that punches its greatness in your face again, again ... and again
Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 48.9 mil. $ (US only)
= Box office success
[Deer Hunter was budgeted at 8.5 mil. $ and ran over budget less than halfway through its production, (already during the wedding scenes, which were filmed first.) The whole film was shot on locations in Ohio, Washington, West Virginia and in Thailand. The box office reports about Deer Hunter's performance are, as many things about the film's inception and making, mixed. Despite the film's success in the US, (after a very lengthy run, ending in the end of 1980), it seems to have been well-received in other countries as well, as in Spain, where 2.2 mil. people paid admission. The film won 5 Oscars, (also for Best Director, Picture and Sound) out of 9 nominations, but was also protested against by red block nations and liberals like Jane Fonda because of its somewhat one-sided portrayal of the Vietnamese.]
What do you think of The Deer Hunter?
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