Coming Home (1978)

You won't be disappointed!

Too much of everything

Brilliant and touching

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

I've watched over 100 of the best films of the 1970s including every single Best Picture nominee and winner and Coming Home edges out every film to be my #1 of the decade.The film traces the lives of a paralyzed Vietnam veteran (Voight) who befriends a Marine wife (Fonda) whose husband (Dern) has just shipped off to the war. Their friendship blossoms into an affair and then back to a friendship again once they both realize that they can't continue on as lovers.The film is brilliantly acted by both Voight and Fonda and both deservedly won Oscars for their performances. Bruce Dern was also nominated for his role and, while The Deer Hunter is a brilliant film, did not deserve the award in 1978 for Best Picture. Robert Carradine also gives one of the best performances of his career and somehow managed to parlay it into the Revenge of the Nerds franchise. Hey, we're not all born smart, I guess.Loosely based on Ron Kovic's life, the film explores the effects of Vietnam not only on the body, but the mind and delves into how people can heal each other just by offering their time and attention to each other. Voight does a far better job than Cruise (Born on the 4th of July) in capturing the emotional impact of a devastating and permanent war injury. He serves as the all-wise and all knowing veteran who has seen the war for what it is, while Dern plays the part of the gung- ho soldier marching off to battle. Fonda holds the story together as a woman caught between the two worlds of early 1960s nationalism and late 1960s disillusionment. Hal Ashby scored a number of wins in the 1970's, but this film is his crowning achievement. A must see for any war film or history buff.Doc StrangeAnd the Losers Are

Coming Home is a drama film that stars Jane Fonda, Jon Voight and Bruce Dern. The screenplay is based loosely on the novel of the same name by George Davis.It was directed by Hal Ashby.The plot examines the impact of the Vietnam War among the men who fought it and the women in their lives. Left alone in Los Angeles when her gung-ho Marine husband Bob (Dern) heads to Vietnam in 1968, proper wife Sally Hyde (Fonda) decides to volunteer at the V.A. hospital where her new friend Vi works. There she meets Luke Martin (Voight), a former high-school classmate and Marine who has returned from Vietnam a bitter paraplegic. As their relationship grows, Sally sees the effect of the war on the soldiers after they come back, inspiring her to rethink her priorities; Luke's spirits begin to lift, and a hospital tragedy helps focus his anger toward meaningful protest. After a Hong Kong visit with her increasingly withdrawn husband, Sally finds a love and companionship with Luke that she had never known with her husband. Once Bob comes home with his own injury, however, the three must find a way to deal with a changing world and with a system that betrayed the men fighting for it. The film ends with Bob swimming out into the ocean in utter despair, presumably to kill himself. As Sally enters the supermarket at the end, the two doors close behind her, accidentally forming the symbolic phrase "Lucky Out". She and Luke are now free to pursue their romance.Coming Home is an excellent film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes on the Vietnam War debacle from the standpoint of three participants - Sally,Bob and Luke - and how it has affected their lives. It also has stellar performances from Fonda and Voight,who won Oscar for their role in it.Overall,it is classic film about the scars the Vietnam War left on the bodies, minds, and souls of many soldiers and civilians.

A flawed film. But also a film of tremendous grace, power, and originality. The flaws; Bruce Dern's character is criminally underdeveloped, and comes off more as a cliché than the other two leads, which damages the power of the films climax. For the film to fully work, we have to believe that Fonda would consider staying with this man, who starts as a martinet, and ends up frightening unbalanced, and dangerous, while Jon Voight seems a near saint. Fonda's character also starts off as a cliché, but deepens quickly as the film goes on. And some of the use of 60s rock songs are bit too on the nose, their comments a bit too obvious. Yet all that said, there is also magic here; in Jon Voight's magnificent performance – arguably the best he's done, in Jane Fonda's fine work. In the feeling of almost documentary realism in the moments of their relationship, in the radical (especially for it's time) dealing with sex and a paraplegic, and the scars of Viet Nam of individuals and a nation. Haskel Wexler's cinematography is also very strong. This is a film who's special moments so stick with me (e.g. Voight's speech to a bunch of high school kids) that I can look past the flies in the ointment.

This film looks at the effect of the Vietnam war on the home front. The script is preachy and cliché-ridden and Ashby's approach is heavy handed. Fonda is fine as the woman torn between husband Dern and lover Voight. The latter two actors don't fare as well. Initially, Voight overdoes the bitter war vet routine. Then his abrupt transformation from obnoxious and self-centered to sensitive and thoughtful is not believable. Dern is surprisingly normal initially but eventually turns into the weirdo that had been the trademark of most of his career at the time. The movie feels stale and uninspired, as reflected by the lazy use of 1960s songs on the soundtrack.