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This performance marked O'Keefe's first (and to date, only) Oscar nomination. Their relationship hits new heights of strain upon their latest move, this time to South Carolina. Ben has long struggled to win the respect and love of his father, a formidable man whose hostile behavior has worked wonders for him in the military but hardly had a positive impact at home. O'Keefe portrays Ben Meechum, teenage son of fighter pilot Bull (Robert Duvall). Michael O'Keefe in The Great Santini (1980) It's a superb performance deserving of a less haphazard picture.Ĩ4. Terrific as Voight is, however, (Busey is phenomenal too) I don't consider that performance quite on the same level as the towering work De Niro does here. Having prevailed four years prior, there was no urgency to bestow De Niro with a second prize. With his victory at the Cannes Film Festival, Voight began as front-runner and, all but steamrolling through the precursors, maintained that position through Oscar night.
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The look on Mike's face when that brutal game of Russian Roulette comes to its end is that of an altogether shattered man.ĭespite The Deer Hunter's award season success in 1978, De Niro never had much traction in Best Actor. Then, of course, there is arresting finale of the picture, in which Mike goes back to Vietnam to save his old friend, a journey that ends on the most gruesome and tragic of notes.
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Both De Niro and Streep (in only her second film appearance) are in exceptional form. When Mike and Linda at last act on their affections for each other, it is less out of passion than it is shared anguish over Nick. He also can't get Steven, now handicapped at the VA hospital, and Nick, still somewhere out there in Vietnam, off his mind. It is beautiful, introspective work.Īs he strolls through his working-class town a newfound war hero, Mike seems less moved by the warm response from the community than he does haunted by the silence that otherwise now surrounds him. Then, Mike returns to Pennsylvania and it's here, in The Deer Hunter's final hour, that De Niro largely has the screen all to himself. There is a blood-curdling intensity to his performance in these scenes, yet not once does he overplay it.
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The actor has never been in form so fierce, not even in the boxing ring as Jake LaMotta. Ultimately, however, the material's not really there for anyone for much flourish early on in the proceedings.īlood at last rushes through the film's veins in the move from Pennsylvania to Vietnam and De Niro is a terrifying sight as Mike somehow musters the strength to survive the prison camp and get his pals the hell out of there. At the longest wedding ever held in the history of mankind, his Mike and Streep's Linda have a charming, flirty rapport that makes the picture's final third all the more affecting. His Oscars may have come for The Godfather Part II and Raging Bull - both iconic turns - but I would argue it's Cimino's film that really brings out the best in De Niro.ĭe Niro makes the most of the film's dire opening hour. Of course, this post is not about the director but rather The Deer Hunter's leading man, who has never been in more exquisite form. The picture reveals Cimino to be an astute, yet undisciplined filmmaker. And then the rest of the picture, in which the men have escaped but are separated, is sorrowful, truly devastating stuff, with De Niro, Walken, Savage and Meryl Streep (as Nick's fiancee) all in sublime form. The center of the film, in which the men go off to Vietnam, is, for my money, some of the most intense and distressing cinema ever captured on film. The first hour, focused mostly on Steven's wedding, is a meandering and entirely uninvolving affair, in dire need of editing. Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is about two-thirds an extraordinary picture. This performance marked De Niro's third Oscar nomination. He is especially haunted by the thought of Nick, who stayed behind in Vietnam. They escape and Mike returns home a broken man, wrestling with his harrowing experience. The trio's cozy lives are forever changed after enlisting in the airborne infantry en route to Vietnam, where they witness the horrors and inhumanities of war and are ultimately taken prisoner. Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter (1978)ĭe Niro portrays Mike Vronsky, steel worker and lifelong friend of Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage).