You’ll never get me to say anything bad aboutRobert De Niro. However, the sanctity of his filmography has undoubtedly taken a hit since the dawn of the 21st century, as the legendary actor began taking paycheck jobs to support his business interests in Tribeca. He may not always work withMartin Scorsesethese days, but when he does, he reminds everyone why he is considered the finest screen actor to ever live. There is no shortage of masterpieces and timeless classics, and most of these films could feasibly besomeone’s favorite of all time. WhileThe Godfather: Part II,Taxi Driver,Raging Bull, andGoodfellaswill live on forever,The Deer Hunter,Michael Cimino’s epic about the decay of a factory town amid the Vietnam War,is a poorly aged product of its time, and I can’t allow it in De Niro’s canon of classics.
Robert De Niro’s Career-Defining Performance in ‘The Deer Hunter’
By the end of the 1970s, when the last helicopters flew out of Saigon, Hollywood was finallyready to tackle the Vietnam War, the quagmire that tore the nation apart on the battlefield and the home front.The Deer Hunter, an audacious, operatic dissection of how American innocence in a steelworker town collapsed due to the shellshock of the war,presented itself as the definitive statement of not only Vietnam, but also a nation still reeling from trauma.
The Deer Hunterisright in Robert De Niro’s wheelhouse. This dark and brooding story abouta man on the brink of self-destruction reflecting on hot-button social and political issuesis a cousin toTaxi DriverandRaging Bull. As Mike, the taciturn blue-collar Pennsylvania native shattered by the horrors of war, De Niro immerses himself in the shadow of Vietnam, both in the pre-combat sequence where we see the final days of joy in his life and in the post-combat arc where he tries to make sense of this cruel world. In the harrowing Russian Roulette scene, where Mike, Nick (Christopher Walken), and Steven (John Savage) have a one-in-six shot at experiencing their own demise, De Niro leaves you breathless, evoking the nihilistic dread of this godforsaken war as he adapts to his surroundings by turning satanic. On the homefront,the actor’s gravitas has never been elevated to such a high magnitude, and his inscrutable nature undermines any chance for the viewer to latch on to him as an honorable hero.
‘The Deer Hunter’ Fails as a Depiction of the Vietnam War
I can’t form a reasonable argument against the sheer potency ofDe Niro’s Oscar-nominated performanceinThe Deer Hunter. However, his turn doesn’t resonate the same today as it would have in 1978 due to what followed in De Niro’s filmography. He continued playing psychologically intense, morally gray characters for the following two decades (to lesser success),so much so that his performance style became less invigorating over time and synonymous with self-indulgent method acting.If any subject deserves solemn treatment, it is the Vietnam War, but one can’t help but think that the overly grandiose apparatus of the film, from its lengthy runtime to its sweeping emotionality, is trying too hard to will itself into being the next Great American Movie. Cimino’s direction is undeniably effective, buthe leaves little room for the audience to instill their own judgment.
Despite being atotemic Vietnam War film,The Deer Hunterleaves me appalled once our steelworkers land on the battlefield. Cimino’s operatic tenor does mighty heavy lifting to make the prolonged wedding scene a captivating look at a quaint factory town. In Vietnam, a conflict that Americans witnessed on the six o’clock news,the heightened reality that energizes the first act cheapens the combat portion.We know so much more about Vietnam throughOliver Stonemovies and other media that it makes the portrait in Cimino’s film look retrograde, notably in its needlessly vilified characterization of the Vietnamese army. Thematic complexities were only used when constructing characters, as the war is egregiously simplified as a clash between good and evil.
The 10 Most Realistic Vietnam War Movies, Ranked
It’s just a shot away.
The jarring dynamic between the hedonistic euphoria of the wedding and the life-and-death stakes of the war loses effectiveness when the latter sequence resembles something closer to an exploitation movie thatChuck Norriswould make. When the narrative devolves into a war-scarred Mike returning to Vietnam to search for Nick, who has decayed into a soulless Russian Roulette-playing machine,the film’s morality fable reaches absurd lows.Following the combat sequence, the return to Pennsylvania purposefully loses its small-town charm, but there’s no excuse why the film has to turn into a staid family drama, whereDe Niro’s scenes withMeryl Streep(who mostly shines in her breakthrough role) become staid.
While certainly an important and triumphant film in his filmography,I can’t embraceThe Deer Hunteras an all-time classic in Robert De Niro’s filmography.His best films, includingTaxi DriverandHeat, are timeless, but Michael Cimino’s war epic is a product of its time, an era when we didn’t know much about the Vietnam War.
The Deer Hunter
