The Deer Hunter comes to Ultra HD Blu-ray from Shout! Factory featuring 2160pHEVC encoded video and lossless DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio sound. I am glad to see it get a release on Ultra HD Blu-ray. Anyway, revisiting it was special and I appreciate it for what meant both then and now as a cinematic work. I think some of that real estate could have been given to the depiction of what they went through during the war but, at its heart The Deer Hunter isn’t a war drama. I felt that on more than one occasion certain scenes just ran overlong, particularly in the first hour or so, before the three men head off to Vietnam. Character building is of course important to establish a viable connection to the relationships in a film like this. What I didn’t recall was how extensive certain aspects of the script can be.

I enjoy the performances by the ensemble cast, pretty much across the board. There are many of its moments that retain the same impact that they did going back to when I first saw it. I haven’t seen The Deer Hunter in a long time. The narrative conveys the loss of innocence, detrimental psychological effects and post traumatic stress suffered by Steven, Michael and Nick and how each of them strove to come to terms with it. The Deer Hunter is most definitely a slow burn of a drama that examines the casualties of war, in this case, its impact on the lives of three lifelong friends from a small town. That was a big deal back then and my friends and I got a charge out of being able to experience the film that way. I was in high school and, remember that it aired “uncut” and included language and violence. I have clear recollections of the watching The Deer Hunter on broadcast television somewhere around 1980 or so.

Experience the brutality of war and the depths of emotional strain on the human spirit in this extraordinarily powerful film classic. Academy Award winners Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken star in this unforgettable saga of friendship and courage. Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and one of AFI's Top 100 Films of All Time, The Deer Hunter follows a group of Pennsylvania steelworkers from their blue-collar lives, hunting in the woods of the Alleghenies, to the hell of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of people in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania.” – Shout! Factory “An in-depth examination of the ways in which the U.S. Starring: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Cazale, John Savage, Meryl Streep Audio Format(s): English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio

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