Verdict:
This film takes a reeeeeeeeeeally long time setting up its atmosphere and characters, an entire first hour, in fact, and then some. I found many scenes to serve no other purpose than that. The atmosphere is important to the film and it is masterfully woven, but the movie may lose your attention a few times in the process. There is not much symbolism, storytelling or tension inserted into all those extra scenes; not much for the mind to chew on.
The film is about the lives of several people from a blue-collar immigrant community before during and after the Vietnam war.
It is a heavy and gloomy film. Even when the characters are laughing and having fun, you feel the sobering weight of their lives. The soundtrack blasts Russian choir in the mountains. There are many twilight and night scenes.
The film has one of the better performances I’ve seen from Christopher Walken and John Savage. The latter is a bit boring in the beginning but really stops you in your tracks later in the movie. Robert De Niro shines in the lead role, as usual, but does not surprise. On the other hand, I think Meryl Streep is much better than given credit to. She has a very natural delivery. Like de Niro is good but he is still acting, while Streep is more like a real human being filmed with a home camera.
Deer Hunter has good actors, good acoustic soundtrack, good atmosphere and some strong story moments, but it also has too many empty scenes. It is a bit like really good jam spread too thinly over the bread. Given the long runtime, the writers could have concentrated a bit more on the life of those people left behind in the US during the war, who instead get completely forgotten while the 3 main characters are off having their nightmare of an existence. Nevertheless, this epic feels solid enough and worth the time.