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Coming Home Reviews

Terrific performances and mature, sensitive storytelling keep this emotionally charged throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 8, 2024

What the film shows us goes against the grain of what it asks us to accept.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2023

With Hal Ashby at the helm, the film also explores very human relationships; these are complicated, believable people, undergoing realistic stresses in realistic environs.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 22, 2022

A beautifully acted love-story -- Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern are memorable and then some, but the politics that supposedly gave the film prestige hardly remain in its after-image.

Full Review | Nov 5, 2021

I found the film's portrayal of machismo in crisis pretty convincing. Fonda acts Sally Bender's stumblings from conformity to politicisation with tenderness and precision, and Dern is moving as the all-American hero going into self-destruct.

Full Review | Sep 22, 2021

A strong, gutsy film boasting characters so real you cry and laugh and feel with them during the little more than two hours that you know them.

Full Review | Aug 5, 2021

The film's power grows stronger when Ashby draws up an anti-war allegation about wartime dehumanization inferences. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 24, 2020

Hal Ashby's Coming Home, the latest of the Vietnam war-oriented movies, is a sensitive, beautiful, and in the end disturbing account of the personal trauma of war and its far-reaching effects on all involved.

Full Review | May 27, 2020

Miss Fonda continues her gallery of sensitive portrayals, Dern is absolutely chilling when he confronts the lovers, Voigt is superb. Despite their efforts and the knowing direction of Hal Ashby, the overall effect is as depressing as the war itself.

Full Review | Mar 29, 2019

This movie is a big deal.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 17, 2008

Though well acted by Jon Voight and Jane Fonda (who won Oscars), Coming Home is one of Hal Ashby's weakest films, a middlebrow melodrama that wears its political message on its sleeves.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 8, 2008

The film has less to do with politics, women's or otherwise, than with a very conventional notion of the redemptive power of mother love. Which would be all right if director Hal Ashby had managed to mount it effectively.

Full Review | Oct 31, 2007

The performances, undeniably appealing, were deservedly praised, Dern and Voight coming off best.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 31, 2007

Coming Home is in general an excellent Hal Ashby film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes on the Vietnam debacle from the standpoint of three participants.

A wonderful movie with stellar performances; though Dern is a bit of a caricature.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 6, 2007

Clich piles on clich to the strains of a garbled '60s soundtrack, but the movie's ending goes some way to recognising its failure. Fonda is magnificent.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 18, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2005

A powerful film about love and war. Oscars for the leads and Bruce Dern deservedly nominated.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 18, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 4, 2004

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Coming Home – film review

Coming Home (1978)

Director: Hal Ashby

Cast: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern

Run time: 126 minutes

Release Date: 15th July 2019

Format: Blu-ray

Jamie Havlin gives his thoughts on an award-winning portrait of American life set against the backdrop of the controversial war in Vietnam. Hal Ashby is a fascinating figure. He was born to a Mormon family in Utah just before the Depression plunged America into economic chaos. As a twelve-year-old, he discovered the body of his father who had committed suicide by shooting himself. He flunked out of high school and was married and divorced by the time he was seventeen.

Maybe not the kind of background you’d expect from one of the most successful directors in 1970s Hollywood. But from Harold and Maude (1971) through to Being There (1979), he directed a string of films that are still fondly remembered and critically lauded today. Arguably the most successful of these was Coming Home.

If you think America is divided today, then just imagine an even more divided nation in 1968 as the Vietnam War raged. Hollywood tends not to want to polarise potential audiences, which is why so few dramas made about the conflict surfaced while it was ongoing, the hawkish John Wayne vehicle The Green Berets being a notable exception.

A decade or so later and with the war ended, America appeared more ready to examine events in Vietnam on the big screen. The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Coming Home all attracting cinema-goers in large numbers and gaining mainly positive reviews from critics.

Coming Home opens with a scene where a group of vets in wheelchairs shoot some pool and shoot the breeze as they do so. One claims, if he was fit enough to do so, he’d go back. Most the others disagree strongly. One man Luke Martin (Jon Voight) just listens.

Silence is unusual for Luke, most of the time he’s splenetic with rage and who could blame him? His two legs paralyzed, he’s strapped to a metal trolley, stomach down, and forced to propel himself with the use of two canes if he wants to get around the hospital, due to a severe shortage of wheelchairs. Staff sometimes find it easier to tranquillise him rather than have to endure his constant tirades, especially when he starts to lash out with one of those canes.

Sally (Jane Fonda) is certainly not part of the feminist revolution when we first see her. Don’t expect her to wear flowers in her hair or flash peace signs either, albeit she doesn’t despise hippies the way her gung-ho marine captain husband does. Bob (Bruce Dern) is about to be sent on a tour of duty to Vietnam where he hopes to gain a promotion and become a major. ‘I feel like I’m off to the Olympic Games to represent the United States,’ he declares enthusiastically. I bet he loved The Green Berets.

Once he is gone, Sally decides to share a flat with far from straight-laced friend Vi Munson (Penelope Milford), whose brother Bill has returned from his draft duty suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. This leads Sally – against Bob’s chauvinistic wishes – to volunteer in a local Veterans’ Administration hospital, where Bill is a patient. Here she meets Luke, who she remembers from school. She was a cheerleader; he was the captain of the football team, the archetypal all-American boy.

Conditions for the vets frustrate Sally. ‘There’s not enough beds,’ she complains to her Officers’ Club acquaintances. ‘There’s not enough staff. It’s really crowded… They are just not prepared for the number of wounded guys that are being sent back.’

But none of them want to hear about problems like these.

Before Luke eventually confesses to her that: ‘I spend ninety-five per cent of the time at the hospital thinking of making love with you,’ we realise that the times are already a-changin’.

Coming Home is often a genuinely moving watch, albeit it is flawed. Its political message is about as subtle as a Daily Mail election editorial, and the change in Luke from embittered hothead to inspiring anti-war campaigner came about far too quickly. While the soundtrack consists of classic acts of the era such as The Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane and Smokey Robinson, much of it is not combined imaginatively with the visuals.

Two tracks near the film’s end, though, escape this criticism. Tim Hardin’s Once I Was is wonderfully poignant but even better is an eleven-minute slice of psychedelic rock/soul Time Has Come Today by The Chambers Brothers. Ashby used all eleven minutes in a tour-de-force sequence, with the action I’m guessing, written around this increasingly trippy track. It works brilliantly.

An early report during filming by studio UA maintained that Ashby had miscast his actors, and early during the shoot, Voight reputedly quit, claiming he wasn’t talented enough to do the role justice.

Strange then that the cast’s collective performances are easily the best thing about the film. Remarkably, not only did Jon Voight and Jane Fonda both pick up Best Actor/Actresses Oscar nominations but Bruce Dern and Penelope Milford were also nominated in the corresponding Supporting Actor/Actress categories.

Voight even managed to beat Robert DeNiro’s turn in The Deerhunter to pick up the gong that year and it really is high praise to say he probably just deserved to edge it.

Extras include a brand-new and exclusive audio commentary by author Scott Harrison; a feature-length commentary with actors Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler; two archival featurettes and collectors booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Scott Harrison and critic Glenn Kenny.

For more on the film: https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/coming-home/

All words by Jamie Havlin. More writing by Jamie can be found at his Louder Than War author’s archive .

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Film Review: Coming Home

Coming Home is in general an excellent Hal Ashby film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes on the Vietnam debacle from the standpoint of three participants. Jerome Hellman's fine production has Jane Fonda in another memorable and moving performance; Jon Voight, back on the screen much more matured, assured and effective; Bruce Dern, continuing to forge new career dimension.

By Variety Staff

Variety Staff

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Coming Home is in general an excellent Hal Ashby film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes on the Vietnam debacle from the standpoint of three participants. Jerome Hellman’s fine production has Jane Fonda in another memorable and moving performance; Jon Voight , back on the screen much more matured, assured and effective; Bruce Dern , continuing to forge new career dimension.

Nancy Dowd’s story was adapted by Waldo Salt and former film editor Robert C. Jones into a home-front drama. Gung-ho Marine officer Dern goes to Vietnam while loyal wife Fonda decides to work in a veterans’ hospital where she meets high-school classmate Voight, now an embittered cripple from the war. Their lives become transformed completely.

Fonda and Ashby have reined in any tendencies to be smug or pedantic. Instead, she provides a superb characterization. Voight’s character evolves as he and Fonda become lovers. A sex scene between the two is a masterpiece of discreet romantic eroticism.

Popular on Variety

Dern’s character is the trigger for certain major events, but there remains enough exposure for him to be convincing as a career soldier disillusioned by Vietnam. Among the large supporting cast are Penelope Milford, excellent as another hospital worker keeping an eye on brother Robert Carradine, very effective as a pitiful, freaked-out and ultimately suicidal case.

1978: Best Actor (Jon Voight), Actress (Jane Fonda), Original Screenplay.

Nominations: Best Picture, Director, Supp. Actor (Bruce Dern), Supp. Actress (Penelope Milford), Editing

• Production: United Artists. Director Hal Ashby; Producer Jerome Hellman; Screenplay Waldo Salt, Robert C. Jones; Camera Haskall Wexler; Editor Don Zimmerman;; Art Director Mike Haller
• Crew: (Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1978. Running time: 126 MIN.
• With: Jane Fonda Jon Voight Bruce Dern Robert Ginty Penelope Milford Robert Carradine

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Metacritic reviews

Coming home.

• 100 Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert It confronts the relationship between Fonda and Voight with unusual frankness -- and with emotional tenderness and subtlety that is, if anything, even harder to portray.
• 90 Variety Variety In general an excellent Hal Ashby film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes on the Vietnam debacle from the standpoint of three participants.
• 75 TV Guide Magazine TV Guide Magazine What does work in Coming Home are the small, human, unguarded moments. The performances, undeniably appealing, were deservedly praised, Dern and Voight coming off best.
• 60 Time Out Time Out Cliché piles on cliché to the strains of a garbled '60s soundtrack, but the movie's ending goes some way to recognising its failure. Fonda is magnificent.
• 60 Newsweek Jack Kroll Newsweek Jack Kroll Admirable in many ways, Coming Home succumbs to the same American lust for romance and heroism for which it implicitly condemns its doomed Marine captain. [20 Feb 1978, p.87]
• 50 Chicago Reader Dave Kehr Chicago Reader Dave Kehr The film has less to do with politics, women's or otherwise, than with a very conventional notion of the redemptive power of mother love. Which would be all right if director Hal Ashby had managed to mount it effectively—he hasn't though, and the results are dramatically incoherent.
• 50 The New York Times Vincent Canby The New York Times Vincent Canby Strong, stinging triangle of two Vietnam vets and one wife.
• 50 Washington Post Gary Arnold Washington Post Gary Arnold Some of the intuitions and sentiments shared by Ashby and the cast result in affecting interludes, but on the whole the material is too diffuse and complacently wistful to accomplish its ultimate goal of getting you there, breaking your heart, scaling the summit of old Mt. Pathos.
• 50 The New Yorker Pauline Kael The New Yorker Pauline Kael Hal Ashby directed this intuitive yet amorphous movie, which falls apart when he resorts to melodramatic crosscutting.
• See all 9 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Coming Home

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Coming Home Review

01 Jan 1978

Coming Home

Despite, in time, being overshadowed by The Deer Hunter, back at the 1979 Oscars it was Coming Home's Jon Voight who took Best Actor from beneath Robert De Niro's nose (with Jane Fonda winning that year's Best Actress).

There's a strong erotic chemistry between the leads, as wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet Voight (his career best) and politically and sexually naive army wife Fonda begin an affair while her husband (Bruce Dern) is on a tour of duty. Hal Ashby's critique of America's abandonment of the psychologically and physically wounded carefully sets itself up as anti-war, not anti-soldier – which is all the more potent in a country that now censors photos of its battlefield coffins.

‘Coming Home’ (1978): An Understated Brilliant Film About After Effects of War

In 1978, Hollywood was finally prepared to deal with the war in Vietnam on film. For years it had been more or less a taboo subject, an open wound no one wanted to discuss or see. However in 1976 director Francis Ford Coppola head to the jungle to make Apocalypse Now (1979), which most thought would be the first film to deal with the war, but no one counted on how long it would take Coppola to make and cut the film.

The first to deal openly and honestly with the war was Coming Home (1978) a superb film about the impact of the war on the men who fought it and their wives. Jane Fonda was the driving force behind the film, shepherding the project from the first script, finding a director she trusted and helping cast the film. The picture deals with a woman, portrayed by Fonda, who watches her war happy husband go off to war leaving her behind to fend for herself. Volunteering at a local veterans hospital she meets someone from her high school years, paralyzed from the waist down as a result of an injury he sustained in the war, and they fall in love. When her husband returns he is a changed man, betrayed by the war, by his country and he learns his wife now likes another man.

For the role of Luke Martin, the paralyzed veteran, Jack Nicholson was approached and wanted the part, but his agreements to do other films stood in his way. AL Pacino and Sylvester Stallone were asked, but eventually the role went to Jon Voight who had been circling the role of the husband, which went to Bruce Dern. Fonda of course would portray Sally Hyde, the woman in the middle of the men, and who grows as a person on her own.

When Bob gets liberty in Hong Kong, Sally flies to visit him and begins to see the devastation of the war on him. He is distant, distracted, sleeps with a weapon close by and walks in circles, talking about the atrocities his men have committed. Bob has been shattered by the war like the others, he will never be the same.

Sally comes home and her relationship with Luke deepens, and a few months later she learns Bob is coming home. He is worse than he was in Hong Kong, and there are questions raised about his injury being perhaps self inflicted. When the military tells him about his wife cheating on him, he goes ballistic and turns a weapon on Sally. Luke arrives and the gun is turned on him, but the men talk their way through it and out of the situation. But Bob cannot cope with what has happened to him, and as Sally shops, and Luke speaks to a group of high schoolers about the war, Bob swims into the sea never to be seen again. The performances carry Coming Home (1978) and what magnificent performances they are. Jon Voight won the Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as the LA and New York Film Critics Awards for Best Actor, for his lovely performance as Luke. His final speech to a group of high school kids is startling in its raw emotion, and powerful feeling. His voice breaks as he speaks, as he remembers, as he regrets. This is a towering performance, one of the decades very best.

Coming Home (1978) was nominated for eight Academy Awards including nominations in all six major categories. It would win Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay, losing Best Picture and Best Director to The Deer Hunter (1978) a grave injustice that has become apparent through the years. No other film more fully explored what was happening to these men when they came home after the war, left to deal with their demons on their own. Brilliantly directed by the late, great and sadly woefully under appreciated Hal Ashby it is a quiet masterpiece that must be seen. It explores a different sort of violence that takes place during war, the violence and trauma done to the soul.

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Coming home.

Directed by Hal Ashby

A man who believed in war! A man who believed in nothing! And a woman who believed in both of them!

In 1968 California, a Marine officer's wife falls in love with a former high school classmate who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the war.

Jane Fonda Jon Voight Bruce Dern Penelope Milford Robert Carradine Robert Ginty Mary Gregory Kathleen Miller Beeson Carroll Willie Tyler Lou Carello Charles Cyphers Olivia Cole Tresa Hughes Bruce French Mary Jackson Tim Pelt Richard Lawson Rita Taggart Claudie Watson Sally Frei Tony Santoro Pat Corley Gwen Van Dam Jim Klein Tokyo Ernie Raul Bayardo Stacey Pickren James Kindelon Show All… Joey Faustine Arthur Rosenberg David Clennon Kimberly Binion Gary Downey Jonathan Banks Marc McClure Haskell Wexler Hugh Farrington Mark Carlton

Director Director

Producers producers.

Charles Mulvehill Bruce Gilbert Jerome Hellman

Writers Writers

Waldo Salt Robert C. Jones

Story Story

Casting casting.

Lynn Stalmaster

Editor Editor

Don Zimmerman

Cinematography Cinematography

Haskell Wexler

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Charles Myers Jim Bloom

Lighting Lighting

Camera operator camera operator.

Donald E. Thorin

Production Design Production Design

Michael D. Haller

Art Direction Art Direction

James L. Schoppe

Set Decoration Set Decoration

George Gaines

Title Design Title Design

Sound sound.

Jeff Wexler Frank E. Warner Robert Knudson

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Gary Liddiard

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Lynda Gurasich

United Artists Jerome Hellman Productions Jayne Productions Inc

Releases by Date

15 feb 1978, 31 may 1978, 02 jun 1978, 01 sep 1978, 09 sep 1978, 01 jan 2005, 11 jun 2003, releases by country.

• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical VM14

Netherlands

• TV 12 Nederland 2
• Physical 12 DVD
• Theatrical R

127 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by eely 🪷 ★★★½ 8

how much do you think jane fonda hated having a republican lick her titty

Review by Sean Baker 8

Revisited after many years. Not my fave Ashby but I love how he tackles the emotionally and physically damaged lives of veterans and their civil rights through a very human, complicated love story.

Due to lack of time, I can't add much to these logs for now. :( Maybe in the future.

Watched Kino Lorber Blu-ray

Blu-ray Extras Include: "Coming Back Home" Featurette

"Hal Ashby: A Man Out of Time" Featurette

Audio Commentary with Jon Voight, Bruce Dern and Haskel Wexler

Original Theatrical Trailer

Review by Justin Peterson ★★★

Her husband was sent off to fight in Vietnam, so she looked to occupy her time by helping those who had already returned home broken by the war. But her passion for one of these damaged men ended up becoming far greater than she ever imagined.

"What I'm saying is! I don't belong in this house, and they say I don't belong over there!"

After loving all of the quirky Hal Ashby movies I have seen so far, I would say the more serious tone he takes in Coming Home did not resonate with me nearly as much. This was nominated for Best Picture the same year as 'The Deer Hunter', an acclaimed film I consider to be highly overrated.…

Review by Jackson ★★★★

How does Hal Ashby get these songs? Each one should cost the entire movie's budget.

Coming Home is one of those movies that sneaks up on you. I didn't think I was hooked until Hal had already pulled the rug out from under me. It's gentle, but the subtle intensity behind each word builds to a tsunami. I've never seen a movie that captures the guilt of post-Vietnam soldiers with so much vulnerability. Three great performances, Voight and Fonda both winning Oscars in a year overshadowed by The Deer Hunter. Put it on your list.

Review by Catherine Stebbins ★★★★★ 2

from Top Ten By Year: 1978 #5

Three years after the Fall of Saigon there were two Best Picture nominees that directly dealt with Vietnam. One was the wholly masculine collapse-of-camaraderie film The Deer Hunter. The other was the far more liberal-minded Coming Home, about tormented veterans and a woman who comes into her own politically and sexually following her husband’s departure for Vietnam. People tend to knock Coming Home for being a war film that ‘descends’ into something as ‘cliche’ as a love triangle. Is there any easier way to dismiss a film for daring to be about the female experience of wartime? These are three people (Jon Voight and Bruce Dern are the paraplegic lover and husband respectively)…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 3

This one is a long time coming (no pun intended). I've been hearing so much about this movie and I've been trying to watch this baby for a long time but this film is like the exterior and I am the guests in El Angel Exterminador , basically for some unexplicable reason I spent an entire year uncapable of watching this because minutes later I simply forgot. That's it. Point blank.

Luckily 2021 was the year and boy I am glad it wasn't a waste at all. I don't adore Hal Ashby's movies, but there's something about his work that somewhat becomes attractive to me and have me craving for more. Maybe is the cynicism that lies underneath any of his…

Review by Blake Bergman "Various Spaghetti" ★★★★½

"Coming Home" is a 1978 drama directed by Hal Ashby. The narrative focuses on the build of the soldier's character in the shape of war before and after, as well as how family and general can be affect both by change and separation. Jane Fonda stars as Sally Hyde, who is married to Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) who is an officer that is eager to get his chance to go to Vietnam. Captain Hyde wears his patriotism on his sleeves, but some of it might be a bit too glazed over for the impact of reality that will hit him actually stepping foot over there. While he is away, Sally wants to make productive use of her time and…

Review by Josh Gillam ★★★★

It’s 1968, and the Vietnam War rages on. Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda), a military wife, has her eyes opened when she starts volunteering at a veteran’s hospital, seeing first hand the consequences of the conflict. She forms a close relationship with paraplegic former soldier Luke (Jon Voight) while her husband Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) is away fighting, in this romantic drama war film directed by Hal Ashby.

Right from the opening scene, with real veterans part of an electric improvised discussion, the themes of disillusionment and the human cost of war are highlighted, made all the more poignant by the people discussing it. The look at how veterans are treated once they come back still feels relevant, and is…

Review by Matthew Noble ★★★★★ 2

"I wish you could feel me."

Because I watch a lot of movies, I am increasingly aware of the artifice of cinema. How music is used, where plot beats will kick in, what emotions to expect. As I see it, my job as a filmgoer is to seek out films that make me forget about these mechanisms, and evoke genuine emotion or understanding.

Coming Home is one such film. As much as I enjoyed The Last Detail and Shampoo , this feels like the next level for Hal Ashby. His style has evolved, in that it feels more understated. While all those political concerns and eloquent interactions remain, they've deepened in their sincerity and conviction. Above all else, the performances are…

Review by Andrew Boley ★★★★★

Basically the most heartbreaking mix tape ever made

Review by Wilson ★★★★ 6

Hal Ashby had the best run of any American filmmaker in the 1970s, in terms of quantity and quality. He made The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home and Being There. Seven brilliant films in nine years. However, one aspect of his career that remains a truism, throughout this, is that there is not a soft-rock song that he does not love. This glib attention to musical detail does not really impact most of his films, apart from Coming Home, where Ashby barely lets the drama get five minutes before cranking up The Beatles, The Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield et al. Considering how deeply felt the drama is, how confrontational…

Review by Taylor Leverage ★★★

Jon Voight had a completely different voice as a young man than he did from middle age and beyond, definitely got scratchier and more hoarse with time. I call it Mickey Rourke Syndrome.

A Vietnam movie that has every Vietnam movie song in the soundtrack, they even play through the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil in its entirety. It's the kind of movie you'd expect to be made in the wake of a controversial war, featuring plenty of outrage and anger but not much of a real discourse, at least not until the final scenes. The film reaches for low-hanging fruit, a disillusioned and crippled veteran and the wife of a Marine that gradually comes around to support his…

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Coming Home Reviews

• 61   Metascore
• 2 hr 6 mins
• Watchlist Where to Watch

Jane Fonda and Jon Voight won Oscars for their performances in this story about the Vietnam War's effect on the American home front. Bob: Bruce Dern. Viola: Penelope Milford. Bill: Robert Carradine. Dink: Robert Ginty. Virgil: Willie Tyler. Beany: Ron Amador. Academy Awards also went to writers Nancy Dowd, Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones. Hal Ashby directed.

Nominated for eight Academy Awards--and winning for Best Actress (Jane Fonda), Best Actor (Jon Voight), and Best Original Screenplay (THE DEER HUNTER, another Vietnam film, won Best Picture and Best Director)--COMING HOME was one of the first films to deal seriously with the plight of returning Vietnam veterans. Unfortunately, it is marred by some cloying melodramatics and overly preachy politics. The story opens circa 1968, when Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), a gung-ho Marine captain, is finally going off to Vietnam on active duty. His dutiful wife, Sally (Fonda), wants to do her share and begins volunteer work at a local veterans' hospital, where she meets Luke (Jon Voight), a bitter paraplegic. Within a month Sally and Luke have learned that they went to the same high school, knew many of the same people, and have much more in common than most others at the hospital. Luke's anger begins to subside, although he begins speaking out publicly against the war. The friendship broadens Sally's perspective; soon she is becoming more liberal in her politics, more feminist in her orientation, and comfortable leading a life independent of her husband. Eventually Luke and Sally become lovers (in a R-rated scene). Their relationship is jeopardized, however, when Bob is wounded in the leg and comes home from the war a changed man--taciturn but potentially violent. While COMING HOME has its heart in the right place, the script by Salt and Jones is too pat, and Ashby's direction simply too self-satisfied to be wholly effective. What does work in COMING HOME are the small, human, unguarded moments. The performances, undeniably appealing, were deservedly praised, Dern and Voight coming off best.

Coming Home (1978)

Directed by hal ashby.

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Description by Wikipedia

Coming Home is a 1978 American romantic war drama film directed by Hal Ashby from a screenplay written by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones with story by Nancy Dowd. It stars Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Penelope Milford, Robert Carradine and Robert Ginty. The film's narrative follows a perplexed woman, her Marine husband, and a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran with whom she develops a romantic relationship while her husband is deployed in Vietnam.

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Review: In ‘Coming Home,’ a Family Rocked by the Cultural Revolution

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By A.O. Scott

• Sept. 8, 2015

Zhang Yimou and Gong Li constitute one of the great director-actress pairings in movie history. In the 1980s and ’90s they worked together on a remarkable run of movies — including “Red Sorghum,” “Raise the Red Lantern,” “Shanghai Triad” and “To Live” — that were central to the resurgence of Chinese cinema and made international stars of both of them. Ms. Gong, noble, fragile and indomitable, was for Mr. Zhang a muse, an alter ego and an emblem of China’s suffering and resilience at important moments in the nation’s history.

“ Coming Home ,” only their second collaboration in the past 20 years, reunites them in an intimate, politically resonant story set in the final years and the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Ms. Gong plays Feng Wanyu, a teacher in a provincial city whose husband, Lu Yanshi (Chen Daoming), a professor, has been sent to a labor camp in a purge of “rightists.” Feng Wanyu lives with their teenage daughter, Dan Dan (Zhang Huiwen), a dancer who dreams of playing the lead in the ballet “ The Red Detachment of Women .” Her father’s pariah status threatens her ambition, and she is eager to denounce him when local officials demand it.

Early in the film, Lu Yanshi has escaped and made his way home in a doomed and desperate effort to see his family again. He receives a mixed welcome. Feng Wanyu is both terrified and eager to be with him, while Dan Dan, who barely remembers her father, is worried about the disruptive effect his presence will have on her life. Her selfishness and shortsightedness, and her inability to sympathize with her parents or put aside her own needs are all perfectly normal. She’s an adolescent, after all. But in a time of political extremity, ordinary feelings and actions can have terrible consequences. Innocent people do not only suffer under a ruthless system; they become agents of its cruelty.

The first section of “Coming Home” culminates in a harrowing sequence that demonstrates Mr. Zhang’s unmatched skill as a choreographer of swift and complex action. The tension and suspense surrounding Lu’s return suddenly dissolves, giving way to a mood of gentle, contemplative melancholy. The Cultural Revolution ends. Surviving prisoners are sent home and rehabilitated. And the psychological conflict in Lu Yanshi’s family gives way to a muted drama of regret and reconciliation.

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Coming Home

• Blu-ray from $14.61
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Product Description

Perhaps the most powerful picture ever made about the shattering aftermath of the Vietnam War, Coming Home earned eight Academy Award® nominations* and three Oscars®: Actress (Jane Fonda), Actor (Jon Voight) and Original Screenplay. Hailed by critics as "dazzling" (Rex Reed), "gripping" (Leonard Maltin) and "unforgettable" (Judith Crist), it is a heart-rending examination of a critical period in our nation's history and "an uncompromising, extraordinarily moving film" (Roger Ebert). When Marine Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) leaves for Vietnam, his wife, Sally (Fonda), volunteers at a local hospital. There she meets Luke Martin (Voight) a former sergeantwhose war injury has left him a paraplegic. Embittered with rage and filled with frustration, Luke finds new hope and confidence through his growing intimacy with Sally. The relationship also transforms Sally's feelings about life, love and the horrors of war. And when, wounded and disillusioned, Sally's husband returns home, all three must grapple with the full impact of a brutal, distant war that has changed their lives forever. *1978: Nominated for Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Dern), Supporting Actress (Penelope Milford), Director and Film Editing

Product details

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.1 x 5.42 x 0.58 inches; 2.93 ounces
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Widescreen, NTSC, Anamorphic
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 127 minutes
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Jon Voight, Jane Fonda
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, Spanish, French
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0006U3SOO
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #8,967 in Romance (Movies & TV)

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And the Oscar for Best Actress goes to “Jane Fonda” Coming Home.

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Coming Home

Dove review.

“Coming Home” is an inspirational film about a spiritual journey. John has lost his way. As a boy, he longed for his workaholic (and alcoholic) dad to be home with him at Christmastime. But sometime later the physical abuse he suffered became too much. Now, years later, John is a married, successful doctor with “miracle hands” that is in popular demand. He didn’t return his father’s phone calls from the last three years; now it is too late. His dad has died. John returns home and has a lot of things in his life in need of repair, including his marriage due to the wife he has ignored because of his work, as well as his children and his brother. His brother James remained in the old hometown to run his father’s western store, and John has put pressure on him to pay back a loan he gave him. John and James also have an adopted brother, Matt, a priest, who is trying to reach the spiritual light that once was in John’s heart. When John views a videotape his father left him before he died, the hard shell begins to soften.

We are more than happy to award this film our Faith Friendly Seal for ages twelve-plus. Christ is preached and it is clear that God is the only one that can renew our hopes!

Dove Rating Details

Reference that a man who drank a lot was abusive and hit his kids.

Wife kisses husband on cheek.

O/G-1; money grubber-1.

Several references to a man that drank a lot, and to "booze"; man says he needs a drink.

Mild cleavage in a couple of scenes.

Saint Joseph is mentioned a lot and John's dad shares how he helped him but God and Christ are the main focus; tension between characters; in the beginning a man wants nothing to do with God and doesn't like hearing about God and prayer; man is prideful and refers to himself as the best physician; kids are upset with dad and one of them tells him he is non-existent in their lives; a man looks at the Bible and, referring to his Dad, says, "You couldn't even save him, could you?" But his Dad did trust God; a mother tells her son, regarding his dad, "He had his share of demons, John. We all do." Man says priest is "preachy".

More Information

Film information, dove content.

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Coming Home in the Dark

“Coming Home in the Dark” initially feels like another entry in that subcategory of horror films where soft pampered city folk go out into the country to be terrorized by locals. But while it cleaves to that template for a little while, this debut feature from New Zealand filmmaker  James Ashcroft soon reveals another story layer that complicates our sympathies. Throughout, the savage intensity of the central predicament keeps tightening the thumbscrews on the audience, raising questions of how far a film can go to make viewers anxious and fearful before it starts to feel like abuse posing as something more rarified.

The story starts with a slow tracking shot across a desolate highway, revealing a car abandoned by the side of the road, personal effects scattered about, driver’s side door cracked open. It’s a stunning opening shot, and there are plenty more moments like it: beautiful, ominous, unsettling, using the landscape in a way that’s simultaneously menacing/desolate and possessed of otherworldly beauty. Ashcroft—who co-wrote the script with Eli Kent , from a short story by Owen Marshall —has that David Cronenberg gift for icy precision and tonal control, where the filmmaking fills the viewer with dread before the credits have even finished. Something horrible is going to happen, probably more than once, and you’re gonna have to wait for it. 

The car belongs to a family on holiday. The father, Hoaggie ( Erik Thomson ), is a white man of Dutch descent who has worked as a teacher and a professor for a long time. His wife Jill ( Miriama McDowell ) appears to be Indigenous, and their tousle-haired teenaged sons, Maika and Jordan (Billy and Frankie Partene), are handsome, talkative, and obviously very close to each other and their mother (though one has unarticulated issues with his dad). The family’s two tormentors, who emerge from the brush as the family is relaxing after a picnic, demographically echo the family: there’s a charismatic, chattering white sadist named Mandrake ( Daniel Gillies ), after the magician; and a stone-cold-silent Indigenous man known as Tubs (Mathias Luafutu). 

I mention the culture-clash aspect of the casting not because the film does a lot with it, but because it fails to really delve into it. This is the biggest missed opportunity of the movie, which has style to burn but (alas) questionable control over the larger meaning of what it shows us. It’s hard to tell if this is a case of simple neglect and obliviousness or if the filmmakers were afraid to go there because they didn’t want to overcomplicate the dynamic of tormentor/tormented (or if they cast the movie diversely because that’s what filmmakers are expected to do now, without pausing to think through the implications of that casting). The bad guys have an agenda and come ready to spring a few narrative twists with ripped-from-the-headlines resonance. But their motivation is ultimately pretty straightforward. It’s probably best to leave it to the viewer to figure out exactly what I mean by that, as this is a rare film where merely to discuss it is to give away its reason for being.

Regardless: the film settles into a sort of “ Desperate Hours ” or “ Funny Games ” or “ Cape Fear ” or “Key Largo” mode, with a self-absorbed, cruel man verbally and physically tormenting hostages with assistance from one or more hench-persons who keep their own counsel and harbor their own secrets. The opening act of the film is so devastatingly cruel that I don’t know if the movie could’ve recovered from it even if it had taken a more nuanced and sensitive approach to the dynamics of the kidnappers and their hostages. The movie just dies and never entirely returns to artistic life except as a grindingly cruel abstraction, with Mandrake’s discount Max Cady serving up sardonic one-liners and musings (when he talks to other characters, he often seems to be saying what he’d say to himself if nobody else were around) and occasionally commanding or participating in a savage act.

The filmmaking and acting talent on display is undeniable. You should expect to see the names of editor Annie Collins and cinematographer Matt Henley on big-budget action and horror films, and Gillies playing verbose, vicious bad guy roles if he wants to go that route. Nevertheless, even accounting for each viewer’s mileage varying, “Coming Home in the Dark” settles into the memory as a mesmerizing missed opportunity at worst, a promise of future classics at best. It’s a razor-edged calling card.

Now playing in theaters and available on demand.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

• Daniel Gillies as Mandrake
• Erik Thomson as Hoaggie
• Miriama McDowell as Jill
• Matthias Luafutu as Tubs
• Frankie Paratene as Jordan
• Billy Paratene as Maika
• Annie Collins
• James Ashcroft

Cinematographer

• Matt Henley

Writer (based on the short story by)

• Owen Marshall

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