10 War Films That Broke All The Rules

If there's one thing no one can deny about Heaven's Gate director Michael Cimino, it's that he's a man with singular visions.

Truly, no one else could have made that 1980 epic. Arguably, no one should have.

When the helmer is on form, though, this original and daring perspective provides striking commentary on how movies view history, and how they distort reality in the process.

In even the most daring, defiantly anti-war Vietnam movies, almost all of the story's action takes place in the invaded country, with the lives of these soldiers and the content of their characters being defined by their time in the country.

In contrast, look at 1979's The Deer Hunter, a Vietnam war drama wherein the majority of the film's action takes place at a wedding party before its characters are conscripted into the war.

Where earlier war films dropped viewers directly into the action and offered only a throwaway line about a "wife at home", in The Deer Hunter the action stays at home with the wives, the camaraderie between friends, the lost joys of their everyday lives, and the broken connections between them.

The Vietnam invasion is a mistake they can't shake off, a misstep that the film puts off as long as it can, and one its desperately wants to leave abroad.

For many veterans, Vietnam is exactly what The Deer Hunter depicts it as: a stain on until-now alright life. In Cimino's film, the horror of war came home.