Michael Cimino's war movie masterpiece is one of the most powerful depictions of the effects of the Vietnam War both at home and abroad. The most famous scene involves Vietcong soldiers forcing POWs to play Russian roulette in a sick game to the death, and it soon enough received accusations of inaccuracy, that there were no reports at all of this happening in reality, despite director Cimino claiming that he had found newspaper clippings of such incidents taking place in Singapore. Whether it's true or not is far from the point. Roger Ebert summed it up perfectly by saying that the Russian roulette sequence is a metaphor for war itself, its random violence, and how it affects the minds of those forced to play it, quite aptly suggesting that it "is a brilliant symbol because, in the context of this story, it makes any ideological statement about the war superfluous". It doesn't matter if this ever actually happened, but these scenes are in the interest of making a more powerful and important allegorical point about war, and it does that extremely well. Are there any other controversies we forgot? Or do you agree with any controversies listed? Let me know in the comments thread.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
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