The Deer Hunter

Pennsylvania steelworkers Michael, Nick, and Steven celebrate Steven's wedding before deploying to Vietnam. Their hometown rituals of factory work, bars, hunting, friendship, and marriage frame experiences that alter each man's capacity to return.

De Niro, Walken, and Savage make trauma divide men who once shared a cadence. The long wedding, steel mill, bar songs, deer hunt, helicopter transitions, and Michael Cimino's patient group observation establish community before rupture.