The Deer Hunter (1978)

Michael Cimino's powerful drama of Vietnam and its aftermath contained an exceptionally controlled performance by Robert De Niro as the focal member of a group of friends altered by the war and reunited back on American soil.

It seemed America was finally ready for a film about the horrors of the Vietnam War, aimed squarely at the heart of blue collar middle American values, while combining the not-so-popular big screen projection of sensitivity and heartrending friendship.

Robert De Niro, John Savage and Christopher Walken are three Pennsylvanian steelworkers about to fight for their country.

We discover their friendship before, during and after the taste of war has soured each of their individual psyches, which ultimately slide down the well of ill-fated mortality.

The three friends who wind up in Vietnam are reunited under the cruellest of circumstances when Michael, Nick, and Stevie are taken prisoner. The physical and psychological horror endured by the trio as they are forced to face each other in sadistic rounds of Russian roulette is made all the more shattering by Michael's strength and his barely controlled determination to will his friends out of the nightmare. 

Yet even after he reaches the safety of home the ties to his comrades are unyielding. Michael can barely bring himself to face Nick's girl Linda (Meryl Streep), whom he has painfully adored from afar, let alone consider usurping his friend's place in her bed. Nick is his conscience and it is only after he has met his obligations to his friends that he can consider reclaiming his own life.

While Cimino's portrayal of the Viet Cong is dramatically one-sided, and the word "roulette" will never have a glamorous connotation ever again, The Deer Hunter projects the heroic tragedy of the common man to heights almost impossible to follow.

The Deer Hunter was released to worldwide acclaim, with Walken's tortured performance of a man giving up on his own soul winning him a well-deserved Oscar as Supporting Actor.

The stirring anti-war drama also picked up Oscars for Best Picture and Director, yet it's the haunting title theme by John Williamson that clinches the whole deal.