Check Out the Trailer

Mixing the difficulties unique to Vietnam vets with the adjustment problems of all returning soldiers, Hal Ashby’s touching drama contrasts the pro-war and the anti-war sentiments by presenting two soldiers connected by their love for the same woman. Ashby isn’t a director that is common to the average filmgoer, but during the 1970s he made some of the decade’s best, including this film, HAROLD AND MAUDE, THE LAST DETAIL, BOUND FOR GLORY and BEING THERE. Without flash, he patiently develops his core characters, allowing emotions to build and accumulate into poignant and powerful reactions. This is one of those films that goes along at a steady pace then reaches a moment where it grabs you by the throat and propels you to another level.

Capt. Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern, FAMILY PLOT) has finally received his mission in Vietnam. With his departure, his wife Sally (Jane Fonda, KLUTE) is on her own for the first time. Inspired by her husband’s best friend’s girlfriend Vi (Penelope Milford, HEATHERS), she volunteers at the VA hospital, where she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight, MIDNIGHT COWBOY), a paraplegic vet who was once the captain of Sally’s high school football team. Confined to the hospital, using canes to propel his wheeled bed around the narrow halls, Luke’s disposition is less than pleasant. Vi’s brother Bill (Robert Carradine, REVENGE OF THE NERDS) is in the hospital for mental reasons; the horrors of war have left him emotionally incapable with dealing with life. Other soldiers complain that they’ve just been forgotten; not given the basic information they need to handle life as a disabled person. Sally feels for the plight of the soldiers and truly wants to help, but the “real” world doesn’t want to think about the wounded men unless it’s one of their relatives. As Luke slowly comes out of his depression, Sally and he strike up a friendship that soon turns romantic. So what will happen when Bob returns home after the war doesn’t turn out like he imagined?

The heartfelt performances are the core of the film’s success. All four of the primary leads received Oscar nominations with Voight and Fonda winning Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively. Voight’s natural performance is the best of his career. From his resentment-filled anger to his tender acceptance of his new circumstances, he captures the wounded soldier’s experience in a truly emotional way. Fonda has an emotional arch of her own, moving from conservative housewife to liberal adulterer. However, that description isn’t meant to be demeaning, just a display of the how much she changes. At the start she is a pretty military wife and by the end she is a hippie-styled independent woman living on the beach with her lover. Never once do we feel that she has fallen out of love with Bob. She is just changing and Luke is a comfort for her loneliness and a stark difference to her warrior husband. Dern sees the war from a unique perspective; it’s a war that isn’t as glorious as he imagined it to be. While his point of view is very different from Luke, his resentment and inner turmoil over the meaning of what he did over there are the same.

Nancy Dowd, Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones all won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, a prize rewarding great characters and an impeccable sense of pacing. In addition to Dern and Milford’s supporting acting nominations, Ashby was nominated for Best Director and the film also received nods for Best Picture and Best Film Editing (Don Zimmerman). Ashby takes the characters on the page and allows them to breath without getting in the way of the actor’s performances. However, when style is needed to make a grander effect, he delivers as well. Take Sally and Luke’s sex scene, it’s one of film’s most erotic and honest for the way it portrays the complications of being paralyzed. The tenderness of this scene underlines the entire purpose of the film — healing.

Support the Site

Buy Coming Home Here!