The Deer Hunter

I love Vietnam movies. The problem that 99.99% of them are terrible still remains though. Almost every movie that focuses on the Vietnam war portrays the soldiers as pot-smoking murderess in a war that is nothing but a lie and a wrong doing to all. "The Deer Hunter" takes a far different approach though, and it focuses strictly on the men, and the small town they live in. In fact, only about 40 minutes of this three hour film take place in Vietnam.
The first hour of the movie takes place in a small mining town somewhere in America. It centers on a group of seven men and two best friends (Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken) as they are about to celebrate their friends wedding before their departure to the war. After the laughs and song and dance with this homely group of people though, the movie jump cuts to the war. The war effects them in a way nothing has effected them before. Many of their minds are tormented (as is yours) during the grueling war that contain some of the most intense scenes I've ever seen in a movie. While watching a scene that involves one character who has practically lost his mind, I looked at the movie in retrospect. Many Vietnam movies show soldiers as crazy lunatics, blatantly and without reason. In this movie though, the transformation from man to mindless was completely believable after the horrors of the war, and you felt the pain of their families.
This is easily the best war movie I have ever seen, but it's almost hard to say it's a war movie as there is little to no scenes involving the war directly. In fact, if you had no idea that this was a war movie, you would be completely caught off guard when the war scenes finally start. If you can get past the running time and look past what the movie may say, or not say, about the war and simply look at the group of men involved and how they are affected by it I strongly recommend this movie.

(side note: the movie ends with a group of people singing "God Bless America" and they are completely honest in what they sing.)

Rambo: First Blood Part II

Now this is the Rambo movie I expected "First Blood" to be. When I saw the first installment in the soon to be quadrilodgy, I was pleasantly surprised to find not a mindless action movie, but a rather smart, unique and engaging action movie with a likeable lost hero. The story changes greatly however, with this sequel.
Before I had seen any of the Rambo movies the first thing that came to mind when someone mentioned them was a classic American action hero slaying foes by the hundreds. As I said earlier, this is not the case with the first film. It is however, the case here. "Rambo: First Blood Part II" is possibly the most "classic" American action movie I've ever seen in that it is really over the top, some of the acting is terrible and it delivers a very pro vet message at the end whilst the majority of the film rags on the Vietnam war.
This film is blazingly cheesy, but it's not a bad movie. There are two kinds of action movies. Good ones (Die Hard). Bad ones (The Killer). And then there's the ones that shouldn’t have been made to begin with (Anything Recent). This movie falls under the "bad movie" categories, but that doesn't mean that it's not enjoyable, it's just mindless. 6 out of 10.