Savant says:
It's funny, the whole review complains that the movie isn't subtle, but then he asks for something like this to be completely spelled out...



It's all there in the movie, it's just doesn't need to be overtly stated in so many words. It's not so much that he has amnesia as that he has become so disconnected from the place he was when he was there that he doesn't want to face it. (That and the heroin.) But since he also doesn't care about money, since he wants to die, he sends it somebody who can use it.

I'm also baffled by people who claim that ending is pro-war, but I'm not looking to start an argument like the one that got the other thread closed. Just wanted to explain something that he seemed to be questioning.

i'm shocked and appalled that my "Deer Hunter" thread got closed. especially since i wasn't responsible for the close!

After finishing the movie last night, i also dont' see how anyone can say the movie is pro war.

That's not how it works.

My problem with this review, and with the same authors new reviews for The Sting & To Kill A Mockingbird, is that he spends 2 pages describing the movie, and only half a paragraph on the dvd quality. His reviews are so detailed & spoiler-filled, only someone who's seen them should read them first. And if you have seen them, you probably really only care about the actual dvd details. None of those reviews even has a single sentence about the sound. They're all supposed to be DTS, but he says Deer Hunter is stereo on the bottom. The other 2 do say DTS on the bottom, but he doesn;t mention how they sound at all. He does actually have 1 sentence for the Sting saying the 5.1 track is nice, although it's supposed to have DTS? This would be cool for a college paper or a straight movie review, but not for a dvd review site. Especially with 3 classics that pretty much every movie fan already knows about, and would be more interested in how they look & sound. Even his video quality review leaves much to be desired. He just pretty much says they look good, without discussing picture clarity or how the color (or B&W) is. I never read the actual movie reviews, I always scroll down to audio & video quality, so please- if you can write that much about the movie, please at least spend some time on the dvd itself.

Savant's reviews were always an analysis of the film more so than a review of the quality of the disc. It's been that way since before he started writing for DVDTalk. if you want to know about A/V quality then his reviews are not the ones to read.

Unfortunately his are the only ones I've found for those three so far.

Actually, I think Savant has become my favorite reviewer in the past two years, primarily because his analysis is always so sharp and interesting -- even when you don't agree with his conclusions or tastes. But Chipmac is exactly right: You don't read them for a discussion of the A/V quality. That's a bit of a shame, but I think you have to approach Savant's reviews like you would a typical film critic's. Think of him as the Roger Ebert of DVD, and enjoy his reviews for what they are: mini-essays.

But I'm totally surprised that nobody else has reviewed these three discs. I would have thought that they'd be big sellers this month.

http://www.dvdauthority.com/reviews.asp?reviewID=4445

I agree with this; although I thoroughly disagree with the opinion presented in the review, reading it made me think about all the things I love about the movie, and really made me want to have a discussion with him about it. I even kinda wanted to respond to a lot of points (for instance, cutting in for a close up on the wine spilling has always made total sense to me, because you wouldn't be able to see the spill at all in the wider shot that precedes it, plus I like it when movies show you things that characters aren't seeing), but many of them were just opinions; however, since he had posed a question in the review, I felt that (given that the answer is there) I ought to at least answer it.

That said, based on what's on this disc, I'll be sticking with my Region 2 anyway, so the A/V specs weren't as important to me.

I finally had a chance to throw them all into the player & The Sting & Mockingbird BOTH have DTS, even though only the Sting's box says it does. And even though Deer Hunter says DD 2.0, it's actually 5.1, although it's called LDT or LI- it's hard to read the logo- 5.1. I have well over 2000 dvds & this is the first I've ever seen this sound. Anyone know what it is? My receiver just says it's DD 5.1. But at least the sound for all of them is actually better than what the box says.

It's called "Logic 7." I mentioned it in another thread. I don't know what it is either, but I think it's the Dolby Surround track (as in Pro Logic) reconfigured for 5.1.