War! What Is It Good For? Apparently, Extremely Compelling Films…

8. The Deer Hunter

Image Source: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

Taking a leaf from Coppola’s Godfather, director Michael Cimino opens his story slowly with an extended working- class Russian-Orthodox wedding sequence. This occurs in the three lead characters’ Pennsylvania mining hometown. He then plunges us directly into the flaming maelstrom of the war itself. Michael, Steven and Nick (Robert De Niro, John Savage and Christopher Walken) find themselves trapped and captured after a vicious firefight. They’re then forced by their Vietcong captors to play a nightmare version of Russian roulette.