Here we go on another trip around those old American obsessions—the primacy of courage, the worship of nature, the inflation of male friendship into a love surpassing the love of women. Writers as varied as Mark Twain and Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman and Jack London, have contributed to the development of this cowboy ethic, which finds its clearest expression in Hemingway…. The disappointing thing about The Deer Hunter is that it starts as if it's going to be a critique of [the cowboy loner ethic popularized by Hemingway] and then proceeds in wild confusion both to glorify and dilute it….

The three buddies are bound for Vietnam but before leaving they join some companions for a final hunting trip in the mountains. By now Mike is taking shape as the stereotype Hemingway Hero: he's revered by the others (whom he refers to as 'assholes') but has only...