The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter (1978) is a war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Michael Cimino. Three Pennsylvania steelworkers — Michael, Nick, and Steven — ship off to Vietnam almost straight from a wedding reception. Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep lead a cast across 183 minutes that spans small-town America and the jungle front.

The film moves in three acts. Before the war: hunting trips, factory shifts, a chaotic send-off party. During it: capture, and a forced game of Russian roulette in a prisoner-of-war camp that became one of the most talked-about sequences in cinema — not for shock, but for what it does to three men who once shared the same hills. After: the pieces left behind.

Cimino's film won five Academy Awards in 1979, including Best Picture and Best Director, and was one of the first major Hollywood productions to look hard at what Vietnam did to the men who came home. Stream The Deer Hunter (1978) on iFILM.