10 War Films That Dealt With The Consequences

One of the great war epics alongside Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Saving Private Ryan, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter sees three small town Americans (played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage) take up what they believe to be their patriotic duty and head out to the vicious war raging in South-East Asia.

What the group don’t realise is that they’re about to say farewell to their lives as they know them. When they arrive in Vietnam, the friends are reunited as prisoners of war and are forced to partake in a game of Russian roulette against each other before they’re able to make their escape. Now both physically and mentally broken by their ordeal, each man struggles to attune to their normal life in different ways.

Although the film (which won five Oscars) has been criticised for not being an accurate representation of the Vietnam war, Cimino’s goal was to portray war's dehumanising nature and catastrophic ways in which it forever changes the lives of those involved. And in that regard, he succeeds magnificently.

There’s a reason why The Deer Hunter is considered one of the greatest films ever made.