The Deer Hunter [4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/Blu-ray]

Director: Michael Cimino, Deric Hashburn Michael Cimino

Overview

One of several 1978 films dealing with the Vietnam War (including Hal Ashby's Oscar-winning Coming Home), Michael Cimino's epic 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. Structured in five sections contrasting home and war, the film opens in Clairton, PA, as Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Stan (John Cazale, in his last film) 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 alone to Clairton 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 in Clairton for a funeral breakfast, singing an impromptu rendition of "God Bless America."

Product Details

Release Date:	05/26/2020
UPC:	0826663202762
Original Release:	1978
Rating:	R
Source:	SHOUT FAC
Language:	English
Time:	1:40:00
Format:	Blu-ray

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Robert De Niro	Michael
Christopher Walken	Nick
John Cazale	Stan
John Savage	Steven
Meryl Streep	Linda
Chuck Aspegren	Axel
George Dzundza	John
Rutanya Alda	Angela
Shirley Stoler	Steven's Mother
Pierre Segui	Julien
Mady Kaplan	Axel's Girl
Amy Wright	Bridesmaid
Mary Ann Haenel	Stan's Girl
Richard Kuss	Linda's Father
Joe Grifasi	Bandleader
Christopher Colombi Jr.	Wedding Man
Victoria Karnafel	Sad-Looking Girl
Jack Scardino	Cold Old Man
Joseph Strand	Bingo Caller
Henen Tomko	Helen
Paul D'Amato	Sergeant
Dennis Watlington	Cab Driver
Charlene Darrow	Red Head
Jane Colette Disko	Girl Checker
Michael Wollet	Stock Boy
Robert Beard	World War Veteran
Joe Dzizmba	World War Veteran
Stephen Kopestonsky	Priest
John F. Buchmelter III	Bar Patron
Frank Devore	Barman
Tom Becker	Doctor
Lynn Kongkham	Nurse
Dale Burroughs	Embassy Guard
Parris Hicks	Sergeant
Joe Strnad Klinger	Bingo Caller
Nongnuj Timruang	Bar Girl
Samui Intata	Chinese Bodyguard
Vitoon Winwitoon	NVA Officer
Charan Nusvanon	Chinese Boss
Chai Peyawan	South Vietnamese Prisoner
Sombot Jumpanoi	South Vietnamese Prisoner
Ding Santos	V.C. Guard
Ot Palapoo	V.C. Guard
Chok Mahasoke	V.C. Guard
Joe Cummings	US Embassy Guard
James Kall	Altar Boy
Tom Madden	Steelworker
Kurtwood Smith	POW in River Cage
Stanley Myers	Composer

Technical Credits

Michael Cimino

Deric Washburn

Louis Garfinkle

Quinn K. Redeker

Michael Cimino	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Deric Washburn	Screenwriter
Louis Garfinkle	Screenwriter
Quinn K. Redeker	Screenwriter
Michael Deeley	Producer
John Peverall	Producer
Barry Spikings	Producer
Elliot Schick	Executive Producer
Fred Cramer	Special Effects
Darin Knight	Sound Mixer
Deric Hashburn	Director
James Fritch	Sound Effects
Donald A. Bolger	Sound Effects
Teri Dorman	Sound Effects
Stephen Katz	Sound Effects
James Klinger	Sound Effects
Joann Carelli	Producer
Marion Rosenberg	Producer
Darin Knight	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director -- and a slew of other awards all over the world -- Michael Cimino's extraordinary Vietnam drama The Deer Hunter accomplished a number of things. For one, it demonstrated that leading lady Meryl Streep, who had heretofore only been seen in supporting roles, was one of the screen's great actresses. For another, it established Cimino, a relative newcomer, as a formidable talent (although he subsequently failed to live up to the promise of this auspicious sophomore outing). And it cemented Robert De Niro's burgeoning reputation as a dependable if offbeat leading man. A lengthy, intelligent film that employed literary references in a stylistic way -- planting seeds early on that would flower into memorable scenes -- The Deer Hunter easily sustained its three-hour running time with inventively staged and beautifully acted set pieces that still linger in the memories of those who saw the picture during its initial theatrical engagement. De Niro, John Savage, and Christopher Walken (who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance) play three buddies from a Pennsylvania steel town, drafted in the 1960s and sent to Vietnam, where shattering experiences irrevocably alter their lives. Streep plays the young woman beloved by both the De Niro and Walken characters. Cimino's narrative structure rambles, and viewers who prefer films that move briskly along strictly linear paths might get restive. But the writer-director knew what he was doing; his protracted emphasis on ceremony and cultural ritual -- demonstrated early in the film with both a wedding sequence and a deer hunt that precedes the friends' deployment to Vietnam -- has resonance in a later episode that has gone down in cinematic history as one of the most harrowing ever: the game of Russian roulette forced upon De Niro and Walken by their Vietcong captors, depicted by Cimino in almost unendurable detail. Intense, powerful, and fascinating, The Deer Hunter not only rates highly among those distinctive '70s films that changed the way Hollywood made movies, it offers a look at some of moviedom's most popular and talented performers in their salad days, showing the promise that each ultimately fulfilled.

Barnes & Noble - Ed Hulse

Realizing that the three-hour film would need to be a prestige event to draw public interest, Universal followed Grease producer Allan Carr's advice and opened The Deer Hunter for one week for Academy Award consideration in December 1978, putting off the national opening until February 1979. The gambit succeeded. The film won the Best Picture prize from the New York Film Critics' Circle and got nine Academy Award nominations as it went into national release, including Best Picture, Best Director, and acting nods for Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep. The movie went on to beat Coming Home for Best Picture and Best Director and also picked up Oscars for Walken's performance, Sound, and Editing. As the film's acclaim grew, it also aroused objections to the depiction of the Vietcong as racist from, among others, Coming Home star Jane Fonda, as well as criticisms from numerous Vietnam reporters that director Michael Cimino was ill-informed about real Vietnam experience, not having served in the war himself. Regardless of the disputes over the veracity of the Russian roulette scenes, they create an indelible metaphor for warfare and its atmosphere of sudden, random violence. While the press notes suggest that the final song was meant to be affirmative, the searing sense of loss that builds up throughout the film renders it profoundly ambiguous. This combination of ambivalence, brutality, and controversy echoed American culture's experience of Vietnam, making The Deer Hunter an even more telling cultural artifact than may have been intended. The film's awards and acclaim manifested Hollywood's willingness finally to reckon one way or another with a war that had been all but absent from movie screens while it was happening, leading the way for such later films as Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). With the prizes and dissension, The Deer Hunter became a popular hit, enabling Cimino to have full artistic freedom for his next film, the financially disastrous Heaven's Gate.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola