The Deer Hunter: Universal Legacy Collection
Studio: Universal Studios Home Video
Year: 1978 (2005 Release)
Rated: R
Aspect Ratio: 2.35x1, enhanced for 16x9 displays
Audio: English DD 5.1*, DD 2.0; Spanish DD 2.0 (mono); Commentary
Captions/Subtitles: English SDH; French and Spanish Subtitles
Time: Approx. 182 minutes
Disc Format: Disc 1: SS/DL; Disc 2: SS:SL
Layer Switch on Disc 1: 1:28:00
Case Style: Sturdy, Book-Style, Snap-Together Digipak
*more on this in the Sound section of the review.
The Feature:
The Deer Hunter tells the story of a group of friends from a small Pennsylvania steel mill town back in the days when gasoline was 32.9 cents a gallon. Mike (Robert De Niro) is the title character, who will soon join fellow mill worker friends Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) in the war in Vietnam. It's the day of Steven's wedding; we meet the other members of the circle, including Stanley (John Cazale), Alex (Chuck Aspegren), and John (George Dzundza), as well as the ladies--most notably Linda (Meryl Streep, in one of her first movie roles).
The men are happy-go-lucky. They shoot pool and sing along to Frankie Valli, then get ready for one last deer hunt before their military service begins. Oh yes, Nick has eyes for Linda (but Mike may, too). Linda asks to house-sit in the house shared by Mike and Nick.
There's a nice, long Russian Orthodox wedding inside a beautiful cathedral, but Mike observes the quirks of his friends instead of the meaning of the ceremony. The after-party is even longer, and ominous: when the bride and groom are pulled on-stage to drink wine from a loving-cup, they are told
"If you don't spill a drop, it's good luck for the rest of your life."
It goes without saying that drops are spilled. (It does not help, either, that the bride is already pregnant by another man...)
After the bride and groom are sent off for their wedding night, Mike decides to streak after them (I guess he was not a tuxedo man). Nick follows, and asks Mike that if anything bad ever happens, to not leave him in Vietnam.
The deer hunt follows, with all the guys along in their various capacities--Stanley, in particular, is disliked and ridiculed for being unprepared and carrying around a pistol. As Mike and Nick go out on their hunt, the choir sings--the mountains are now a cathedral--and the act of tracking down the deer and shooting it is a religious experience. Mike tracks down a deer and kills it--in one shot. After one last visit to the bar, the men are off to Vietnam.
And this is where I start having problems with
The Deer Hunter. First, it does not help that I've read director Michael Cimino comment that setting the movie during the Vietnam war was immaterial: this was a story about friendship under stress.
It does not help either that once we hit Vietnam, there seems to be a lot of story missing. Hey, maybe some of that long party could have been trimmed to find out how Mike gets to a village alone and bloodied. Steven and Nick come in with some troops on a helicopter, then the next thing you know they are stranded. Then they are suddenly prisoners under a hut by a river, where there are rats in the water and blood gushing from suicide torture matches being held above. (And this is source of big problem #2 that I have with this movie... the suicide torture seems like a plot device and not an actual torture method used in Vietnam.)
The trio eventually escapes on the river, but only Nick makes it into a rescue helicopter, with the others hanging onto the skids but falling back to the river. Steven breaks his legs from the fall. Mike carries him to safety. We're next in the U.S. Military Hospital in Saigon, with Nick quite out-of-it. He's released to go back home. Then he goes out on one dark Saigon night, where he can't find any horizontal refreshment that appeals to him... he continues to walk the darkened streets... he hears a gunshot... then another... and he sees bodies being carried out and dumped. He meets an older Frenchman in a car who tries to entice Nick into a Russian roulette gambling parlor. Mike's there (it's a small world, after all), but Nick does not notice, and Nick gets out before Mike can catch up.
Mike returns home to find Linda heartbroken that Nick is AWOL. We get the feeling that Mike wants to make a play for Linda, but he holds off out of respect for his friend. Linda seems to have feelings for Mike, though. Mike's other friends are overjoyed at his return--the whole town seems to notice--and there's even a deer hunt to celebrate. But the darker side of Mike's personality is shown when Stanley goes too far in his taunts.
Mike eventually tracks down Steven in a VA hospital, and Steven shows a drawer of $100 bills that came from Vietnam. It seems that Nick is still there.
As Saigon is falling, Mike returns to find his friend and keep his promise.
The Deer Hunter won five Oscars, including:
Best Picture
Best Director (Michael Cimino)
Best Support Actor (Christopher Walken0
Best Film Editing (Peter Zinner)
Best Sound (Richard Portman, William L. McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, C. Darin Knight )
The Feature: 3.5 / 5
Video:
For the first time in Region 1,
The Deer Hunter has been given a new anamorphic transfer. The 2.35x1 image looks incredible. Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography is brought out with vibrant colors, detail, and black level. The colors are drop-dead gorgeous, from the deep, rich blues of the nighttime sky, to the neon red and green of a lounge sign, to the lavish interior of a cathedral, to the jungles of Vietnam. In his commentary track, Zsigmond explained how he usually avoided natural lighting, opting instead to use lights on his actors and within his scenes to achieve the movie-like effect. However he did it, it looks great--and it is represented well on the DVD.
Although I saw a few minor instances of edge enhancement, I did not notice any other artifacts. Even scenes where there might be trouble, like a misty, tree-lined mountain valley with a slow-moving lake, were beautifully rendered.
Video: 4.5 / 5
Sound:
This is where it gets tricky...
The Deer Hunter was released in Dolby Stereo in its 35mm release (which is how I saw it in the theater). According to the Internet Movie Database, it was also released in 6-channel sound for 70mm release. I can't verify the accuracy or the sound layout of this release.
On the DVD, apart from the commentary track, we've been given three sound choices: a thin-sounding Spanish monophonic track in DD 2.0, a rather good-sounding English Dolby Digital 2.0 track (stereo surround), and a mysteriously labeled English "Logic 7" track that plays back as Dolby Digital 5.1.
My research on "Logic 7" shows that it is a decoding method which extracts 5.1 or 7.1 soundtracks from a 2.0 source. Are we to conclude that the English "Logic 7" version of the soundtrack is derived from the Dolby Digital 2.0 version?
Well, I spent a lot of time flipping between the two soundtracks, and they sound almost identical. There is good dynamic range, low-end, directional effects (at least on the front channels) and rear-channel involvement--although nothing really indicating split surrounds.
The sound won an Oscar--it is well represented here, but I have to wonder what happened to the original 6-channel mix.
Sound: 4 / 5
Extras:
Disc 1 includes a feature-length commentary with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and film journalist Bob Fisher. Zsigmond talks a lot about his craft (which I personally find interesting) and Fisher tries to keep things on-topic. Interesting trivia: a lot of the dialogue and many of the scenes were improvised.
Disc 2 includes 16:56 of deleted and extended scenes. Disc 2 also includes the trailer (2:48), and ten pages of production notes.
Once again, considering the stature of this film, I find the extras to be a little too thin. And where's that commentary track recorded by director Michael Cimino which was included with the older British special edition?
Extras: 3 / 5
In Conclusion:
If you really want a movie that captures the Vietnam experience, you might want to check out
Platoon. Meanwhile,
The Deer Hunter finally has a decent DVD transfer, as all Best Pictures should. While I question how the soundtrack was created for this edition, it still sounds great. And the picture quality is stellar.
Overall Rating (rounded up): 4 / 5
Release Date: September 6, 2005
Display calibrated by Steve Martin at http://www.lionav.com/
