“The Deer Hunter,” directed by Michael Cimino is a great film that I don’t recommend for those of the faint of heart. This film takes place during the Vietnam war, being released a couple years after the war its self was declared over. This film stars some great talent, with male leading stars such as Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken, with the female lead being portrayed through Meryl Streep. The film is a couple minutes over three hours, and has a intriguing story that kept me interested from start to finish. The narrative of the film follows Michael (De Niro) and “Nicky” (Christopher Walken,) and their group of friends before heading to the battlefield in Vietnam, a portion of their time in the war, and then the struggles and hardships they have to face back home in America. Reading the reviews and debates of this movie, all of them centered around the aspect of its realism and how accurate the film was in general. In particular, a serious and intense tone surrounds the idea of the game Russian roulette and “having the guts” to pull the trigger. This Russian roulette game was something that the characters were forced to play against each other while in Vietnam, and effected the characters drastically through out the film, being one of the center points for representing how the characters felt mentally and how it haunted them throughout the whole film. Now this whole Russian roulette game never actually happened during the war and this plot of the movie was all fabricated and not based off any real accounts. In regards to this, critics debate if this scene ruins the authenticity  of the movie or not, with one critic from WikiZero saying, “Director Cimino was also criticized for one-sidedly portraying all the North Vietnamese as sadistic racists and killers.” and another critic from Bright Lights Film Journal auguring that this scene was racist, quoting a British corespondent saying it was “a cynical attempt by Hollywood to make money, with a movie that appealed directly to those racist instincts that cause wars and that allowed the Vietnam war to endure for so long.”

So the historical question that seems relevant to all this would be does this plot point fabricated  on nothing really deserve to dictate how people see the movie? In my opinion, I feel the movie was fine the way it was and would have to agree with a critic from Montreal Film Journal saying, “The effect is striking. We really see how it must feel to be suddenly pulled out of your life and thrown in hell on earth.” I would have to disagree with critics opposing this because although the movie was based on a concept that never happened, the film wasn’t trying to be authentic in that sense, but be authentic if how the soldiers really felt and how the situations they were thrown into effected their mental state and their lives back home, and the Russian roulette game symbolized that greatly, regardless of if it was made up or not. Although this film did not have and real scenes, the feelings the soldiers went though were accurate, which could be seen though the films movie poster trailer, which really gives a good sense of what this film is trying to portray though the solders hardships and their mental states when they return back home.

All in all I would have to say this gives a great understanding towards what happened in the war, showing the death, violence, and mental problems that came afterward, but it is still pretty mainstream none the less. I say this because the film has all the traditional action scenes and conflicting love interests while following the traditional story of a “hero” of sorts fighting his conflicts with a somewhat predictable outcome. But again, with saying this movie is mainstream, I still think it touches on a aspect of the mental health of soldiers and how society deals with them, something  most people don’t get to see or think about, but is still a pretty important topic. I do recommend every one who thinks they can handle it to watch this movie, I feel it let me look into the mental hardships soldiers had to go through and gave me somewhat a different perspective on how we should talk about veterans health today.