Mike turns the game to his advantage so they can escape captivity, but the men are permanently scarred by the episode. As Mike ruminates post-hunt, the film cuts to the horror of Vietnam, where the men are captured by Vietcong soldiers who force Mike and Nick to play Russian roulette for the V.C.'s amusement. Mike treats hunting as a test of skill, lecturing Stan about the value of 'one shot' deer slaying and brushing off Nick's urgings to appreciate nature's beauty.

Structured in five sections contrasting home and war, the film opens in Clairton, PA, as Mike ( Robert De Niro), Nick ( Christopher Walken), and Stan (John Cazale, in his last film) celebrate the wedding of their friend Steve (John Savage) and go on a final deer hunt before the men leave for Vietnam. One of several 1978 films dealing with the Vietnam War (including Hal Ashby's Oscar-winning Coming Home), Michael Cimino's epic second feature The Deer Hunter was both renowned for its tough portrayal of the war's effect on American working class steel workers and notorious for its ahistorical use of Russian roulette in the Vietnam sequences.

The deer hunter cast