In 1978’s American war drama The Deer Hunter, three friends portrayed by Bobby DeNiro (we’re tight), Christopher Walken, and John Savage enter the Vietnam War as cheerful, vivacious jokesters only to return damaged and half-full. (So basically, it’s like almost every single war movie ever made.) But what Michael Cimino’s film really offers here is some dynamite performances, including Meryl Streep, who plays the girlfriend of Nick (Walken), the soldier who suffers the worst fate of them all.

Comparing this film to some other heavy hitter war flicks (Platoon!), I liked it, but didn’t love it. It’s odd that most of the film centered around DeNiro’s character, Mike Vronsky, as he searched for his friend Nick after the war ended. For a 3+ hour-long film, I really hoped to see more of Walken, simply because he was jaw-droppingly amazing. Dude went balls to the walls in every scene he was in. In particular, one scene had the Russian steel working friends captured as POW’s of the Vietcong baddies. The Vietcong forced them to play Russian Roulette at gunpoint in one of the most tension-filled and harrowing scenes in this history of forever (according to a very trusted souce…uhh…me. But no, really. It’s a crazy scene.) 

You hope and pray that the friends make it out alive. The camaraderie that these three exhibit in the first act of the movie is palpable and makes you wish you were just palling around with DeNiro, Walken and Savage (err…their characters, I mean).  To keep this spoiler free, I will say that the friends get split up, more war stuff wars on, and Act 3 is primarily revolved around Mike looking for the friends that he lost overseas.

So back to Walken being a madman. He picked up his first and only Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Throughout the course of the war scenes, viewers can witness Nick’s descent into mental instability and Walken sells it hook, line and sinker, making it one of my favorite performances on The Quest thus far, and the best Walken performance to date. That said, as aforementioned, I wish the film was told from Nick’s point of view instead of the ol’ Deer Hunter guy, Mike. If the movie had centered around Nick’s downward spiral, like, oh say, Taxi Driver, I think The Deer Hunter would’ve been a slightly more compelling film.

This movie came in way over budget and past its schedule. I guess no one cared after it was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning five categories in total (Cimino’s next film, Heaven’s Gate, had similar problems but the opposite fate – it became a box office failure). Aside from Cimino’s future hiccups, The Deer Hunter made quite a few waves with the controversial Russian Roulette scenes, causing quite a stir in the world of 70’s cinema.

History and war, with a dash of Meryl Streep – I guess it was no surprise that this film became prime Oscar bait. Fans of war movies and/or Christopher Walken: You want to see this.

Grade: B