The story is fairly simple. A group of working class joes go off to Vietnam, get captured by the Viet Cong, and go through traumas that leave them all scarred in one way or another. While the story of the ravages of war (not just Vietnam) has been told many times, what makes The Deer Hunter so notable is for its cast and their performances. Robert De Niro's name sold the film, but just about everyone in the movie gives a career-defining performance. John Cazale, John Savage, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, they all give themselves wholeheartedly to the material. As, of course, does De Niro himself, who plays against type.

Michael Cimino pulls no punches with this film. It's harrowing stuff, with whole families being killed, and unspeakable tortures piled on "innocent" American soldiers. The centerpiece of all of this is a game of Russian Roulette that ends up defining what the movie is all about. This is not an easy movie to watch, much in the same vein of Requiem For A Dream or Breaking The Waves. The film is good, damn good, in fact, but while it's on you just want it to end. Once it has, you can't stop thinking about it. Because of this, it doesn't have a very high rewatchability factor.

Watching it now, the film takes on overtones that were probably never intended at the time it was made. The evocation of small town life doesn't seem nearly so rustic when its populated by people who are now acting legends, and the whole thing feels like less of a cultural flash point and more of a cinematic one. Considering this was one of the last of the 70's auteur films, and directly led to the death of mainstream commercial acceptance of said films, watching it brings out a bevy of mixed feelings. As good as it is, perhaps it was too much of a good thing.

The HD DVD:

The Image:
Despite having been recently re-released on DVD, this HD DVD has a very disappointing image. In his commentary, DP Vilos Zsigmond discusses how he and Cimino intentionally tried to degrade the film, to give it more of a documentary feel. However, he concludes by saying the film still looked cleaner than they wanted it to. If that was the case, then he must be very happy with this transfer, which has poor blacks and low detail. Most of the interior scenes are very soft. Exteriors, especially in Vietnam fare better, but even they aren't anything spectacular. Not the worst I've ever seen, but nothing approaching good.

The Audio:
For a relatively low budget film from the late 70's, I didn't expect much from the audio, and I didn't get much in return. Despite this supposedly being a Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 mix, it's focused almost entirely on the center channel. However, dialogue is always understandable, so as long as you're not expecting a sound effects extravaganza, this will do just fine.

The Supplements:
While not brimming over with special features, this HD DVD is not without a few goodies. The major supplement is a commentary by DP Vilos Zsigmond and film journalist Bob Fisher. Zsigmond can, at times, be hard to understand, but Fisher does a good job of making sure the important ideas always get through. Zsigmond has a lot of excellent stories and information about the film. The only problem is that there's actually another commentary for the film that isn't on the disc - and it's by Michael Cimino. I happen to have it on a British DVD, and it's an incredible listen. I don't know what rights issue Universal hit that they couldn't put it on this disc, but the HD DVD is lesser for it.

Then there are about fifteen minutes of deleted scenes, extended takes, and alternate takes. Considering the film is already over three hours, and sometimes a slow three hours at that, these extra scenes are just tedious. Surprisingly, there's also a theatrical trailer on the disc. Considering Universal has done their best to eradicate theatrical trailers on their HD DVDs, I have no idea why they put this one in. It's old, scratched up, and generally looks awful.

The Conclusion:
The Deer Hunter is a film with a tremendous reputation. In many ways, the film lives up to it. However, it's not an easy film to watch. Despite the high quality of the film, its low replay value, plus poor audio and video, make it good for one or two viewings at best. Rent It.

Daniel Hirshleifer is the High Definition Editor for DVD Talk.