Michael Cimino's Vietnam War story centers around an "ours not to reason why" trio of mindlessly patriotic Middle Americans from a small Pennsylvania steel town. Three hours long, in the tradition of bigness established by the Second World War stories of Norman Mailer, James Jones, Herman Wouk, and Irwin Shaw, the movie has an enfeebling lack of dramatic focus, of overall form, of individually interesting scenes, of social context, and of point of view. There is at least one interesting scene — the one where the three Pennsylvania pals are reunited in Viet Cong captivity (a hefty improbability, but never mind that) and where Cimino introduces Russian roulette as a Viet Cong torture technique and as his personal metaphor for the entire war (a complete fabrication, but never mind that either). This scene has a lively imaginative quality, a claustrophobic compactness in its staging, a grueling duration, a bit of emoting from Robert De Niro that approximates the pumped-up intensity of an athlete just prior to the Big Game, and, as a final bonus, a rousing outburst of Errol Flynn heroics, which, taken all together, give it a solidity difficult to find elsewhere in the movie. Christopher Walken, John Savage, Meryl Streep, and John Cazale. (1978) — Duncan Shepherd