Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter was met with both critical and commercial success upon its release in 1978. However, it was also highly controversial and came to be seen as a powerful statement on the human cost of America's longest war and as a colonialist glorification of anti-Asian violence. Brad Prager's study of the film considers its significance as a war movie and contextualizes its critical reception. Drawing on a wealth of contemporaneous materials, as well as an in-depth analysis of the film's lighting, mise-en-scène, multiple cameras and shifting depths of field, Prager examines how The Deer Hunter simultaneously presents itself as a work of cinematic realism, while it problematically blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Although Cimino felt he had no responsibility to historical truth, depicting a highly stylized version of his own fantasies about the Vietnam War, Prager argues that The Deer Hunter's formal elements were used to bolster its troubling portrayal of war and race. Finally, comparing the film with other depictions of US-led intervention, such as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Albert and Allen Hughes's Dead Presidents (1995) and Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods (2020), Prager illuminates The Deer Hunter's major presumptions, blind spots and omissions, while also presenting a case for its classic status.