 "Good!" | 2010-02-19 |
| - Reviewed By Patricia from Albuquerque |
A good movie!
This seller is wonderful with a very quick shipping! Thanks! |
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 "Cimino's one shot becomes a classic of its type" | 2009-12-30 |
| - Reviewed By Dennis W. Wong |
| I recently re-watched this film in HD DVD after several months of not watching it and it made me think of how sad that the director Michael Cimino's first effort would be his one and only best film (even Orson Welles went on to make some unique films after "Citizen Kane" like "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Touch of Evil") and he could not sustain the momentum. Blessed with a fine cast consisting of Robert DeNiro, John Savage, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken (he won an Oscar for this) and the late John Cazale plus an excellent script--it's no wonder this film cleaned up at the Oscars. Also the HD DVD version is head and tails over the other Standard Def ones in video quality and you can get this one for under $10 at Amazon. As far as I know, there is no Blu-ray version out yet but I could be wrong. |
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| "Sweeping ambitious compelling storytelling" | 2009-12-17 |
| - Reviewed By C. B Collins Jr. from Atlanta, GA United States |
This is a broad sweeping film, never summarizing too quickly for the audience, always allowing the story to unfold gradually for the observer. The film is extremely ambitious for it attempts to catch life for a young group of blue-collar steel workers as the celebrate a wedding and enlistment in the army to go to Vietnam, followed by scenes of terror and horror in Vietnam, followed by the return to the United States of some of these characters, and then the return to Vietnam for the film's primary protagonist to attempt to find and save an old friend. The steel mill town, in Pennsylvania, in which they all live and work, must be seen as an essential aspect of the film for we are gradually shown the interconnections and networks and relationships between all parties that truly make up a community. A community loses these men to Vietnam and a community absorbs two of them back.
There is so much content in the film it is actually hard to review. Because I want to discuss the complexity of theme and character in this review, some folks who don't want to learn too much about the plot should stop reading this review now. There is excellent character development that director Michael Cimino allows to flow naturally with an outstanding cast. Robert DeNiro, John Savage, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, and John Cazale were all in top form in perfect performances. The film does a better job of establishing sense of place and time that almost any other film I have ever seen. The Russian Orthodox wedding and reception was incredible at establishing time and place, at allowing the characters to reveal themselves to the viewers through their subtle movements and eye contact, at establishing a contrast against which Vietnam can be seen in all its harsh terror. The scenes of Vietnam, especially the hell on earth in Saigon when the United States was pulling out of the country, were terrifying.
Robert DeNiro plays a young man, Mike, who is a good and loyal friend but he is also self contained, self reliant, a different type of man than most. He is the classic hero for he is fun loving, loyal, athletic, but he proves his loyalty and heroism often in the film. He is willing to go into the jaws of death to seek his best friend and house mate, Nick. We often focus on the hero, for he is usually handsome and brave and takes great risks for the benefit of others. Mike is such a character. However, this film has a twist in it for his best friend Nick tries to be just as loyal and just as brave and does not measure up to the hero. It is Mike who figures out a way to escape from the POW pits and Nick follows. It is Mike who voluntarily falls back into the river when Steve falls from the helicopter back into the river. Nick struggles to help his friends but he is rescued and they are not. How does one deal with the fact that they are always number 2 when compared to their exceptional best friend, especially if events appear to show that one friend failed to save another? Nick tests himself in the worst possible way for he tries to repeat the horror he experienced in the POW cages, hoping this time to emerge fearless, to finally win, to finally become the heroic man that he sees in Mike. Christopher Walken is at his very best playing this character of Nick, a man that literally seeks the horror he once experienced in an attempt to overcome that horror. But the horror eats human souls. This was a powerful storyline about war, torture, and the way that torture destroys many of its victims for the rest of their lives.
The character of Steve, played perfectly by John Savage, offers a contrast to Nick. For Steve is wounded in body and soul but it is Mike that is able to pull him back into the lives of the living. The character of Linda, played by Meryl Streep, is complex for she must reconcile her grief over the loss of her relationship with Nick with her controlled attraction to Mike. Her honesty and transparency were amazing, making her regal in the role of a check-out clerk in a grocery store.
The film is now 31 years old and expresses a time that was 41 years ago. Yet it captures a realistic time in our history. It tells a compelling story of bravery and sacrifice. It has complex three dimensional characters. It attempts to achieve greatness through a sweeping and tragic story that is as powerful today as it was 30 years ago.
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| "Deniro lives up to Taxi Driver here and then some" | 2009-12-02 |
| - Reviewed By (SurvivorMan) from Northern California, USA |
| Now here is truly a drama as good as, if not better than Platoon. Especially in light of this dark era we find ourselves living in, where it seems that military and prison are the only two industries thriving right now, this may be the best movie ever made. What a sick, demonic world that we are living in today, if you don't mind my saying so, or if it's even still legal for me to say it. The film shows the effect traumatic situations can travel into within a mind control framework, where after the satanic ceremonial 'cleansing' of war, Walken rejects Heaven and prefers Hell because it is all that is familiar to him now. At least that's my take on it. It's interesting to me how those living a Hell on earth may very well find themselves in a Heaven within the cosmos later. The power of friendship and the power of trauma are the two central themes here in this beautiful movie which shows the essence of both better than any other that I can recall. Also, Cavatina is a great song that perfectly matches the tone in the overall movie. It starts off slow but it is well worth it to watch to the bitterweet end. |
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| "great movie" | 2009-10-10 |
| - Reviewed By An Amazon User |
I've seen this movie before, but I had forgotten the plot since then. I appreciate it more seeing it again. You can see what the actors look like when they were young, compare their acting then and now, and also see how well the movie was made then.
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| "In the first rank of American film-making." | 2009-10-07 |
| - Reviewed By Alastair N. Mcleod from San Diego, California |
I watched Michael Cimino's The Deerhunter again recently, some thirty years after I first saw it. It remains a remarkable film, a piece of powerful story-telling, a coming-together of fine actors and fine acting, engrossing scene-setting, careful character-building, and deep meaning. I was struck most forcefully on this second viewing by two things: the film's foreshadowing of American decline, and its testament to the power of myth.
The America of The Deerhunter, the massive industry, the doughty immigrants, the omnipresence of Detroit, the mysticism of guns and hunting, the wealth that made the war, and the way it was waged, possible--all that is gone now, or going. Did Cimino see that it was being destroyed, that Viet Nam was destroying it, or is it just very easy to see now that that was when the darkness began to take hold?
In the final scene of the film, the main characters are gathered for breakfast after the funeral of the friend who destroyed himself in Southeast Asia. One man is legless and broken, another alienated forever from his civilian friends by the knowledge of what the war really was. Their women are emotionally shattered. The men who stayed at home are well-meaning but lost. The gathering is awkward, grief-laden, every participant burdened with the incomprehensible. What has happened is not what should have happened, not what anyone ever dreamed could happen, not what anyone knows how to live with. And what do they do? They begin hesitantly, spontaneously to sing together, God Bless America. What else can they do? They have no other story to live by.
It is an extraordinarily touching, delicate moment, vibrant with human truth, a grand anti-climax to a story of heroism, community, patriotism, friendship, and madness, of failed faith. This is a film by a man who understands our country, believes in it, but has the courage and the gentleness to relieve of us our illusions about it, if we will allow him to. We need this film now, as we needed it when it was made, when we could not fully understand what it was telling us. |
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