The Deer Hunter (1979)

The Deer Hunter is a 1978 American epic war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Ruthenian American steelworkers and their service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, and George Dzundza. The story takes place in Clairton, a small working class town on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh and then in Vietnam, somewhere in the woodland and in Saigon, during the Vietnam War.

The film was based in part on an unproduced screenplay called The Man Who Came to Play by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker about Las Vegas and Russian roulette. Producer Michael Deeley, who bought the script, hired writer/director Michael Cimino who, with Deric Washburn, rewrote the script, taking the Russian roulette element and placing it in the Vietnam War. The film went over-budget and over-schedule and ended up costing $15 million. The scenes of Russian roulette were highly controversial on release.

The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Michael Cimino, and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken, and was named by the American Film Institute as the 53rd greatest American film of all time in the 10th Anniversary Edition of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list. In 1996, The Deer Hunter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Synopsis

In Clairton, a small working-class town in western Pennsylvania, in late 1967, Russian American steel workers Michael "Mike" Vronsky (Robert De Niro), Steven Pushkov (John Savage), and Nikanor "Nick" Chebotarevich (Christopher Walken), with the support of their friends and coworkers Stan (John Cazale) and Peter "Axel" Axelrod (Chuck Aspegren) and local bar owner and friend John Welsh (George Dzundza), prepare for two rites of passage: marriage and military service.

Actors