I was doing a play at the time this came out called How I Got My Story, which was about Vietnam. I went to see it for research and found it the most unbelievably moving and harrowing film. I saw it before
Apocalypse Now (1979), which is also great, but
The Deer Hunter (1978), from a human point of view, really captured the awfulness of the Vietnam War: the cost in lives and the mental scars it left. And there are three of the greatest performances that I have ever seen on screen:
Robert De Niro,
Meryl Streep and
Christopher Walken.