Robert De Niro Double Feature (Casino / The Deer Hunter) Review
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.
Robert De Niro Double Feature (Casino / The Deer Hunter) Overview
Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Deer Hunter is simultaneously an audacious directorial conceit and one of the greatest films ever made about friendship and the personal impact of war. Like Apocalypse Now, it's hardly a conventional battle film--the soldier's experience was handled with greater authenticity in Platoon--but its depiction of war on an intimate scale packs a devastatingly dramatic punch. Director Michael Cimino may be manipulating our emotions with masterful skill, but he does it in a way that stirs the soul and pinches our collective nerves with graphic, high-intensity scenes of men under life-threatening duress. Although Russian-roulette gambling games were not a common occurrence during the Vietnam war, they're used here as a metaphor for the futility of the war itself. To the viewer, they become unforgettably intense rites of passage for the best friends--Pennsylvania steelworkers played by Robert De Niro, John Savage, and Oscar winner Christopher Walken--who may survive or perish during their tour through a tropical landscape of hell. Back home, their loved ones must cope with the war's domestic impact, and in doing so they allow The Deer Hunter to achieve a rare combination of epic storytelling and intimate, heart-rending drama. --Jeff Shannon
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