The film was based in part on an unproduced screenplay called The Man Who Came to Play by Louis A. Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker about Las Vegas and Russian roulette.

The Deer Hunter received acclaim from critics and audiences, with praise for Cimino's direction, the performances of its cast, its screenplay, realistic themes and tones, and cinematography.

With Steven breaking both of his legs on the river’s rock bottom, Mike carries him until they join refugees and a South Vietnamese Army convoy fleeing to Saigon.

Cimino instructed the props department to fashion complete photo IDs for each of them, including driver licenses and medical cards, to enhance each actor's sense of his character.

The protagonist in the Redeker/Garfinkle script, Merle, was an individual who sustained a bad injury in active service and was damaged psychologically by his violent experiences, but was nevertheless a tough character with strong nerves and guts.

[21] Meryl Streep accepted the role of the "vague, stock girlfriend" to remain for the duration of filming with John Cazale, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Once the unit unwrapped and the extras disappeared, the crew discovered to their amusement that the boxes weren't empty but filled with real presents, from china to silverware.

"[43] At this point in the production, nearly halfway through principal photography, Cimino was already over-budget, and producer Spikings could tell from the script that shooting the extended scene could sink the project.

[22] U.S. Steel allowed filming inside its Cleveland mill, including placing the actors around the furnace floor, only after securing a $5 million insurance policy.

[38] The Viet Cong Russian roulette scenes were shot with real rats and mosquitoes, as the three principals (De Niro, Walken, and Savage) were tied up in bamboo cages erected along the River Kwai.

[46] According to Cimino, De Niro requested a live cartridge in the revolver for the scene in which he subjects John Cazale's character to an impromptu game of Russian roulette, to heighten the intensity of the situation.

[11] In his review, Roger Ebert defended the artistic license of Russian roulette, arguing "it is the organizing symbol of the film: Anything you can believe about the game, about its deliberately random violence, about how it touches the sanity of men forced to play it, will apply to the war as a whole.

"[10] In his Vanity Fair article "The Vietnam Oscars", Peter Biskind wrote that the political agenda of The Deer Hunter was something of a mystery: "It may have been more a by-product of Hollywood myopia, the demands of the war-film genre, garden-variety American parochialism, and simple ignorance than it was the pre-meditated right-wing road map it seemed to many.

Inhumanity was the theme of The Deer Hunter's portrayal of the North Vietnamese prison guards forcing American POWs to play Russian roulette.

"[70] The final scene in which all the main characters gather and sing "God Bless America" became a subject of heated debate among critics when the film was released.

[48][87][89] The film was praised for its depiction of realistic working-class settings and environment; Cimino's direction; the performances of De Niro, Walken, Streep, Savage, Dzundza and Cazale; the symphonic shifts of tone and pacing in moving from America to Vietnam; the tension during the Russian roulette scenes; and the themes of American disillusionment.

The consensus reads: "Its greatness is blunted by its length and one-sided point of view, but the film's weaknesses are overpowered by Michael Cimino's sympathetic direction and a series of heartbreaking performances from Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken".

[94] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called The Deer Hunter "a big, awkward, crazily ambitious motion picture that comes as close to being a popular epic as any movie about this country since The Godfather.

Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote a positive review with some reservations: "[It is] a small minded film with greatness in it ... with an enraptured view of common life ... [but] enraging, because, despite its ambitiousness and scale, it has no more moral intelligence than the Eastwood action pictures.

"[10] Jonathan Rosenbaum disparaged The Deer Hunter as an "Oscar-laden weepie about macho buddies" and "a disgusting account of what the evil Vietnamese did to poor, innocent Americans".

"[99] In a review of The Deer Hunter for Chicago magazine, Studs Terkel wrote that he was "appalled by its shameless dishonesty," and that "not since The Birth of a Nation has a non-Caucasian people been portrayed in so barbaric a fashion."

[102] The central theme of the Viet Cong forcing American captives to play Russian roulette has been widely criticized as having no historical basis, a claim Cimino denied but did not refute with evidence.

The ensuing domino effect led to the walk-outs of the Cubans, East Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Poles and Czechoslovakians, and two members of the jury resigned in sympathy.

[108][109] Cimino's next film, Heaven's Gate (1980), debuted to lacerating reviews and took in only $3 million in ticket sales, effectively leaving United Artists bankrupt.

"[110] Andrew Sarris wrote in his review of Heaven's Gate, "I'm a little surprised that many of the same critics who lionized Cimino for The Deer Hunter have now thrown him to the wolves with equal enthusiasm.

Because he had no apparent motive for this promotion, it had an added power and legitimacy and it finally did start to penetrate the minds of the Universal's sales people that they actually had in their hands something a bit more significant than the usual.

"[114] The Deer Hunter was among the early, and most controversial, major theatrical films to be critical of the American involvement in Vietnam following 1975 when the war officially ended.

The Deer Hunter unleashed a new, raw dynamic in combat and action, paving the way for Platoon, Saving Private Ryan and Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima films.

[124] In 1996, The Deer Hunter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[127] The film ranks 467th in the Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time,[128] noting: Cimino's bold, powerful 'Nam epic goes from blue-collar macho rituals to a fiery, South East Asian hell and back to a ragged singalong of America the Beautiful [sic].