Deer and Dogs Delivered

 Three movies starting with “D”:  The Deer Hunter, Dogs of War, and Deliverance.

 The Deer Hunter.  I mentioned Michael Cimino’s epically horrible film “Heaven’s Gate” earlier, but now I’ll review his other masterpiece.  This is three hours long.

 Four guys in Pittsburgh, in an ethnic Russian community.  Stan/Stosh (John “I knew it was you, Frodo!” Cazale) is exempt from military service for some reason;  Steven (John Savage); Nicky (Christopher Walken); and Michael (Robert De Niro).  They celebrate Steve’s wedding to Angela, who is pregnant with another man’s child.  They go deer hunting, and Mike kills an impressive male deer.  They go to Vietnam (minus Stosh), and get captured (together) by the VC/NVA and forced to play Russian Roulette.  Mike figures to play with three bullets, and then uses those three shots to kill the three most attentive NVA, takes their weapons and shoots the rest.  In the process of being picked up along the river after escaping, the three lose track of each other.

Mike goes back immediately with no apparent injuries or PTSD.  He hooks up with Linda (Meryl Streep).  Angela is catatonic, but manages to reveal Steve’s location:  missing his legs, playing bingo at a VA hospital.  He wants to stay there indefinitely, as despite being drab and depressing, he’s not much worse off than anyone else.  The only news about Nicky is that he’s AWOL and has not come back.  Ironically, Mike saw him in Saigon before leaving, but couldn’t chase him down after finding him in a Russian Roulette gambling club.

Mike returns again to Saigon, where it must be April 1975:  all hell is breaking loose and civilians are storming the US Embassy compound to leave the country with the Americans.  After some difficulty, he finally tracks down Nicky through the Frenchman.   Sadly, he doesn’t quite manage to get Nicky back to Pittsburgh.  There’s some residual scenage back in Pittsburgh, with Steve now rejoined the community with Angela, but mostly it’s over.  Three hours with only two truly memorable scenes in the entire movie. 

 Dogs of War.  Lately I’ve been checking out older actors’ earlier roles.  Helen Mirren is a major babe in “Age of Consent” (and showing considerable skin).  Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill) actually had a career before “Married With Children” – he’s a NYPD cop in “Cruising”, Al Pacino’s NY cop movie in which he tracks down a serial killer preying on NYC’s gay community.  And in this movie he’s a mechanic who briefly meets with Shannon (Christopher Walken).  

 Shannon is a covert ops guy from NYC who’s hired to assist with a regime change in fictional Zangaro, a country in west Africa.   First he goes on a reconnaissance mission to scope the place out, is badly mistreated by local authorities, barely managing to survive to return to NYC.   Despite this, or maybe because of this – and a huge paycheck promised – he agrees to assemble a team to return and put in a marginally less crappy dictator in place of the crazy current guy.  Lots of violence and explosions.  Tom Berenger is the only other major actor in this. 

 Deliverance.  Four normal guys – Lewis (Burt Reynolds, sans mustache), Ed (Jon Voigt), Bobby (Ned Beatty), and Drew (Ronny Cox) - go on a canoeing trip in Georgia.  The river in question has some dangerous rapids, but the bigger picture is that they are building a dam in the local area which will eliminate the river and put much of the local area permanently underwater.  Although not a hunting trip, per se, Lewis has (helpfully) brought along a bow & arrow.  After Drew has a brief jam with the local banjo kid, they set off down the river, having paid difficult and hostile locals – all of whom consistently give them the “you’re not from around here” treatment – to drive their station wagon and Harvester Scout down to Aindry, the town at the end of the river where they expect to end up.

            Along the way, Ed and Bobby are captured by local Trump supporters and forced to endure unwanted sexual advances that go well beyond merely sniffing their hair.  They are rescued by Drew and Lewis; the consensus seems to be that the locals intended to murder Ed and Bobby after their involuntary romantic interlude.   Then and there, the four agree on a “story”, an alternative explanation of the events, knowing that honestly relating the facts will simply get them a jury of locals sympathetic to the deceased.  On the way back, Drew drowns and Lewis is badly injured.  The authorities suspect foul play but can’t prosecute anyone as the stories are consistent enough and the evidence is buried.   And there was much rejoicing…