I watched it again yesterday after many years and I just realize that the pivotal moments I remembered from the movie, it was all Walken. His transformation was impressive, tangible. The same way the Gladiator belonged more to Joaquin Phoenix than to its hero, Russell Crowe. Walken's performance just blew me away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjC-tI_QKgw
I just finished watching it and yes Walken's performance is just great. I don't think that movie is more of Walken but yes, movie got me surprised in the last 20-30min when Mike starts looking back for Nick and watching Nick's affected life just disturbed me.
Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals - Butch C and Sundance K.
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i think critics didn't like the performance of De Niro because his character is not very likeable. I on the other hand think this is one of De Niro's best films and its easily Walkens best movie. Both were very solid in this film.
shareDepends on if Christopher Walken is somehow connected to the Ford family of Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Every where I look, the Ford name keeps poping up. That is Ford Theater or Ford Cars or Jesse James' Ford friend or Director Francis Ford Coppola or even Director John Ford.
shareI do believe that De Niro states The Deer Hunter was his greatest performance of all time, I tend to agree with his feelings as well. He also stated that it was his most exhausting film.
shareWait...is there a requirement to be a likable character or something? Are these guys idiots??
"When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die"-Bane
Good god sicilian ... I am sitting here with chills after watching that roulette scene ... you summed up De Niro's performance PERFECTLY for me. Thank you.
shareThe scene of DeNiro's that blows me away the most is his scene alone in the motel room after ditching his coming home party. His body is grieving but his eyes appear dry; he holds his head where the wound was visible in Viet Nam . . . he can't get comfortable, he's restless and miserable . . . it blows me away.
". . . the single moment of artless, charmed happiness. . ."
The scene in the motel....such a great detail...Di Niro squats in the manner that rural Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian men do -- it's a casual, usual way of sitting for them -- feet flat on the floor, full weight sitting on heals, but leaning forward, shoulders hunched in, with arms on the insides of the legs/knees. It's like Pennsylvania is what felt foreign to Michael now, and he was mimicking the body language of the people he saw in Vietnam to feel more "at home."
I agree Walken does an astonishing job in this film, but don't wish to compare who's movie it is :)
It's like Pennsylvania is what felt foreign to Michael now
excellent new comparison/point. wished i'd 'seen' that. i'm so familiar to the movie and points of view, that i think i've seen/heard them all - nope
They were both great.
De Niro in his prime was simply amazing.
I totally agree that Christopher Walken is great in this movie but if it was really his movie they would have called it The Deer Hunter's Best Friend. It is totally DeNiro's movie. I will always feel it is the best performance of his career and that is saying a lot. All the performances in this film are so fantastic and continue to hold up 35 years later.
shareThis is way too tough to call. De Niro carried most of it and was such an awesome strong-willed and believable guy, a "man's man", and Walken did such an amazing job of going from a level-headed guy to a shell of a person who had lost his soul by the end. Two of the best performances in any movie ever IMO.
And hell, let's not forget Meryl Streep, who did an amazing job of playing a poor fragile woman whose entire life is sent around the bend by the men in her life, one of whom loves her and then forgets about her (Nick), and the other (Mike) who loves her and then later is distant and has to force himself to love her (one got the impression he only even slept with her to comfort her). And even in the beginning we see her being hit by her father. A terrible life. Fantastic performance by Streep. And John Cazale was great in his last performance as a cowardly weak guy (by then a traditional role for him).
No surprise to me that this movie did so well at the Oscars. One of the few movies that deserved all of the Oscars it won IMHO.
I agree. Nick is the emotional core of the film. Nick's destruction is the point of the film. That war can do this. It can destroy this kind, gentle man you fell in love with during the first hour. Mike is the protagonist, and the titular deer hunter, but i feel like the movie lets us use Mike as a conduit for how to see Nick. He'll only go hunting with Nick, and you know what? So would I.
shareWalken's character is totally Your Best Friend that you wish you were more like, while De Niro plays the guy you feel you really are (although I hope I'd have half the sand De Niro's character has to survive the film).
shareIt was a cowbell band in Saigon that sent Nick into insanity.....his mind couldn't take the torture of the noise of constant banging on the bells , sad really :(
shareChristopher Walken did a decent job and received a best supporting actor oscar for his role.However to me this is Robert De Niro's movie.It was his portrayal of Michael that took an emotional toll on me.De Niro is amazing in this.
shareWhile not wanting to knock Walken at all (he was fine), I was more taken with the supporting performances of Savage, and while playing an unlikable character, Cazale. I've only watched this film once (today), but I never reacted to Nick being the moral center of the film, or really learned all that much about any of the characters in this film.
I thought that DeNiro's performance accounted for most of the emotion I took from this film. This film certainly had a great cast, and I don't like saying that a given movie is any actor's film, but in this case, to me, it was mostly about Michael - due in great part to a superb actor at the top of his game.
Is my favorite of Chris Walkens and he showed the struggles a soldier obtains from war and pts disorder. Back then there wasn't any help for soldiers struggling with that. His acting from the beginning to the end showed the transformation of a regular person to a tortured soul by war, friendship, and romance. The Deer Hunter is my all time favorite movie.
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