Review of The Deer Hunter (1978) by Darryl S — 27 Aug 2015

There are classic films that you get excited about watching because you expect to really enjoy them and have some fun with the story, and then there are films like The Deer Hunter where you know the experience might be rewarding but you're probably not going to enjoy it.

Sure enough, this intense film about the horrors of war and the way it traumatizes the soldiers who go through it, was not easy to watch. It did an amazing job of showing the awful way that humans can treat each other and how dramatically that can tear apart ordinary lives.

One of the interesting aspects is that it accomplishes all this without a single line of expository dialogue. We are just watching these people live their lives and it gives us a real connection to the events they suffer through.

The big downfall of The Deer Hunter is the length. This film is dragged out at least an hour longer than it needed to be. This is felt the most in the first act when we have to slog through so much of these people's lives before going to war.

The 30+ minute wedding scene is almost unbearable, and had me really tempted to hit the fast-forward button. I totally understand that the goal was to establish what the world was like for these characters before going to war, so we'd have a nice contrast when the third act rolled around, but they didn't need this amount of time to accomplish that.

I can totally see why this film was critically-acclaimed and it does feature some of the greatest acting performances I've ever seen from Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken. Sadly, the length was just too much for me to take, and the story is so dark that I don't expect it is a movie I will revisit.