The Deer Hunter is a war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. It is loosely inspired by the German novel Three Comrades (1937), by World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, which follows the lives of a trio of German World War I veterans in 1920s Weimar Germany. Like the novel, The Deer Hunter meditates and explores the moral and mental consequences of war violence and politically manipulated patriotism upon the meaning of friendship, honor, and family in a tightly knit community and deals with controversial issues such as drug abuse, suicide, infidelity and mental illness. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, George Dzundza and Chuck Aspegren. The story takes place in Clairton, a small working class town on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh and then in Vietnam, somewhere in woodland and in Saigon, during the Vietnam War. It was filmed in the Pittsburgh metro area; Cleveland and Mingo Junction, Ohio; Weirton, West Virginia; the North Cascades National Park in Washington state, the Patpong district of Bangkok in Thailand (imitating the Saigon red-light district), and Sai Yok, Kanchanaburi Province (also in Thailand).

Plot

In Clairton, a small working class town in Western Pennsylvania during the late 1960s, Ukrainian-American steel workers Michael (Robert De Niro), Steven (John Savage), and Nick (Christopher Walken), with the support of their friends Stanley (John Cazale), John (George Dzundza) and Axel (Chuck Aspegren), are preparing for two rites of passage: marriage and military service.