Christopher Walken's Best Role Came With An Unforgettable Slap In The Face

Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" is a scalding experience. Over three hours, we get to know a group of Western Pennsylvania steelworkers who are plucked from their blue-collar town and thrust into the confounding hell of the Vietnam War. These are not complicated men. Left to their own devices, they'd put in their 40 hours a week, and spend their free time either throwing back beers at their local bar or tracking deer in the Appalachian Mountains.

Cimino lets us get comfortable with his characters in their natural habitat, so that, when they're captured by Viet Cong soldiers, and, among other tortures, forced to play Russian roulette for the gambling pleasure of their captors, we share their bewilderment and outright terror. This is where "The Deer Hunter" also becomes a problematic experience. Though the Viet Cong unquestionably abused prisoners of war, there is no substantial evidence that they forced American soldiers to play Russian roulette. It's an odd invention on Cimino's part, but, dramatically, it is brutally, viscerally effective.

These scenes are scarring because Cimino cast some of the greatest actors of their generation. Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage are fully committed, particularly in the Russian roulette sequences, where one pull of the trigger could explode their skulls. That they're harrowingly believable should come as no surprise. That they required a little extra motivation to launch these moments over the top might raise eyebrows — especially considering the methods employed to elicit the desired degree of emotion

Everyone is incredible in "The Deer Hunter," but it really is Christopher Walken's movie. He plays Nick, who disappears into the Saigon underworld after recovering from wounds sustained while held captive by the Viet Cong. Nick becomes a prolific Russian roulette player (as well as an emotionally hollowed-out heroin addict), and amazingly survives long enough for De Niro's Mike to return to Vietnam and almost talk him into returning to Pennsylvania (this is when the bullet with Nick's name on it at long last finds its target).

Getting Walken to this desolate state required some distressing groundwork in the earlier scenes where he's abused by his captors. If you've seen the movie, you know that there's no faking the punishment Walken sustains. How did these moments come to be, and who gave the direction? Interestingly, you can't blame Cimino for these excesses.

In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, Walken referred to the shooting of "The Deer Hunter" as "a little like making jazz." He acknowledged that Cimino's script was very good, but that there was also a spontaneity that injected an uncommon ferocity into the film's most charged scenes. So when the Viet Cong slapped Nick around in the prison camp? Walken was absorbing some very real blows. As he told Rolling Stone:

"The guy who was slapping me was an attorney from Bangkok. I don't think he'd been in a movie before — or after — but he was a Thai lawyer. He smacked me in the face for a couple of hours."

Walken elaborated on this experience in a 2021 interview with The Guardian. "We shot that in the jungle," he said. "We were put in bamboo cages. It was all for real. Right down to the slap in the face."

Why did this non-professional actor feel emboldened to whack the crap out of a fellow performer? He was encouraged by Academy Award-winner Robert De Niro to do so (because the Method-trained thespian thought the unexpected slaps would "make the scene pop").

De Niro, who eventually became an accomplished director in his own right, wasn't wrong. And Walken's jarred reaction helped earn him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. 40-plus years later, Nick still feels like Walken's defining role. Then again, it's hard to top his final moment. "One shot." You can't unsee that.