The Deer Hunter - Two-Disc Special Edition
£17.99, Optimum

There are many reasons why the cinema of the 1970s is regarded as Hollywood's last golden age. The big, influential films from that decade, while offering plenty that was truly new, also drew heavily from the past, often redefining old genres for the times. What Star Wars did for sci-fi and The Godfather did for gangster movies, Apocalypse Now and this did for war movies. What still impresses most about The Deer Hunter is the feeling of space. It takes its own time to get to where it's going. The wedding scene, a mere four pages in the script, goes on for around three quarters of an hour. From the gloomy steeltown opening through to harrowing postwar Vietnam, the movie gives you time to let things soak into your head. By the time it finishes, you completely believe such idiotic concepts as Christopher Walken making a career as a Russian roulette player. This DVD includes interviews with director Michael Cimino (still wonderfully pompous), cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond and an emotional John Savage. Cimino's eventful commentary reveals such interesting anecdotes as star Robert De Niro's insistence that a real bullet in the chamber would make the Russian roulette sequences play better. They don't make them like this any more - partly because there are laws and strict regulations against it.

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