Coming Home

Rating:
Summary: Hal's Most Supreme Achievement
Review: Let me only add a few tidbits that will help the viewer, also because the reviews at amazon have been more than superlative and insightful (so please read and enjoy them as i unquestioningly did). I think it's time to recognize the greatness of Hal Ashby, who was a John Ford of the Sixties who came of age like his movies and the United States in the Seventies and the Eighties. To wit, then HAROLD AND MAUDE, THE LAST DETAIL, SHAMPOO, COMING HOME, and, of course, BEING THERE. And let me add that SHAMPOO was the reverse side of the coin that bore COMING HOME. As much as COMING HOME was about stoicism and regaining dignity, SHAMPOO was about hedonism and loss through self-indulgence. Robert Altman marries the two themes for the Eighties in his more enigmatic THE WEDDING, which is much less ambitious than Ashby's duology and makes a better companion piece to just SHAMPOO, but is also much less riveting than either movie by Ashby. And what a marriage indeed COMING HOME is between sound and feeling, time and action, world and will, all in a somewhat intimate, desperate but ardent drama of being out of sync the way literally the movie audience is and one of the movie characters becomes at the end but for all different reasons.

Rating:
Summary: THE MOST MOVING OF THE VIETNAM WAR FILMS
Review: More emotional than THE DEER HUNTER, and that's going some, Hal Ashby has a masterpiece that moves even the most macho of hearts, especially when Tim Buckley's "Once I Was" plays its first five notes. Oscar worthy, as well as winning, COMING HOME is a gripping work of artistic integrity. Forgotten among the two big Oscar winning roles are Bruce Dern and Penelope Milford (both Best Supporting nominees) and Robert Ginty, all 3 of whom do more than fill screen space. The Rolling Stones "Out Of Time" cannot be more perfectly placed.

Rating:
Summary: THE MOST MOVING OF THE VIETNAM WAR FILMS
Review: More emotional than THE DEER HUNTER, and that's going some, Hal Ashby has a masterpiece that moves even the most macho of hearts, especially when Tim Buckley's "Once I Was" plays its first five notes. Oscar worthy, as well as winning, COMING HOME is a gripping work of artistic integrity. Forgotten among the two big Oscar winning roles are Bruce Dern and Penelope Milford (both Best Supporting nominees) and Robert Ginty, all 3 of whom do more than fill screen space. The Rolling Stones "Out Of Time" cannot be more perfectly placed.

Rating:
Summary: "Coming Home" an inspiration
Review: Sally Bender (Jane Fonda) feels lonely and unfulfilled while her husband Bob (Bruce Dern) is away in Vietnam, so she volunteers at a veteran's hospital. There she meets an old high school acquaintance named Luke Martin (Jon Voight). Luke is a bitter paraplegic, but he begins to warm up to Sally. Sally discovers that beneath his rage Luke is sensitive and attentive, whereas her husband is distant physically and emotionally. Luke is released from the hospital and he and Sally fall in love. Sally feels emotionally - and sexually - fulfilled for the first time, but she and Luke know that the days are numbered until Bob comes home. Soundtrack includes original songs by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Buffalo Springfield. Luke comes across as an inspiration when we see how he doesn't let his crippling injury hamper his life. Unfortunately, some of the final scenes let us down; there really isn't a satisfactory wrap up. Otherwise a wonderful film that will stand the test of time.

Rating:
Summary: An important film.
Review: This film, the "other" 1978 movie about the Vietnam War, "Coming Home" takes a different approach than Michael Cimino's stark, shocking, "The Deer Hunter", which won a Best Picture Oscar.

Cimino used a power approach to deliver his message, drumming the filmgoer with sounds and images. Hal Ashby's "Coming Home" uses a more subdued, character approach to explore the real price of the Vietnam War.

I'm not so sure I'd agree that either Jon Voight (Academy Award-Best Actor) or Jane Fonda (Academy Award-Best Actress) is exemplary (they both won Academy Awards) but I think they are both very good. The bottom line is that this was an important movie, at a critical time, and the subject matter and its presentation really hit home. This is a film that is impossible to ignore, in 1978, or today, no matter what your political or social sensibilities may be. The language, the attitudes of all the characters is open, honest, frank. At the time this film was made, that was indeed breakthrough, for this subject matter, paramount.

An absolute must see.

Rating:
Summary: Offensive garbage
Review: This is in the running for the worst film I have ever seen. It is deeply offensive to me.

No, it is not the anti-Vietnam War message that offends me. I'm fine with that. The Vietnam War was an atrocity committed by my country against the Vietnamese patriots who just wanted freedom.

It is a national disgrace that America was on the wrong moral side of this war, that we were 100% wrong to be there and try to prevent the Vietnamese people from getting what we are trying to give the Iraqi people now, a democracy where they could simply vote for their own leaders.

We were the ones who prevented them from taking that vote. We forced an unwanted regime down their throats. We split their country in two. We had no damn business there.

Eisenhower should have kept his promise to allow a vote. Truman should not have turned his back on western-educated patriot Ho Chi Minh, who wanted us as his allies. Truman should not have forced Ho Chi Minh to turn to the communists.

It was all a miserable and demonic blunder on our part, trying to keep Vietnam as a French colony when India and the Middle East were winning their freedom from England in the post-war years.

So as you can see, I am completely in agreement with the politics of this movie. But I still hate the movie.

Jon Voigt plays a despicable (...) who is seducing a married moron played by Jane Fonda. Her acting is cardboard in this movie, the worst I've ever seen her. But it is his role that annoys me the most. It's not his acting. It's the script.

We are supposed to sympathize with this immoral (...) because he is in a wheelchair and because he is right on Vietnam. What about her husband?

(...)

Rating:
Summary: A paraplegic vet, a military wife and the war in Vietnam
Review: This is the moving story of a military wife, played by Jane Fonda, who volunteers in a veterans' hospital when her captain husband gets sent to Vietnam. Here she meets Luke Martin, a paraplegic, played by Jon Voight. When she first meets him, he's on a gurney, and when she accidentally bumps into him, his catheter bag is knocked over, embarrassing him so much that he goes into an angry rage and has to be restrained. Eventually, though, she comes to know him and, as his condition improves enough so that he can get a wheelchair, she gradually develops a relationship with him. Through the art of this film, I found myself drawn right into the emotional intensity of the situation and I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the life of a paraplegic.

All the actors are great, including the supporting roles of Bruce Dern as the husband and Penelope Milford as Fonda's friend whose psychotic brother commits suicide. No wonder the film was nominated for eight academy awards in 1979 with those coveted statues going to Fonda and Voight as well as a trio of writers for the screenplay. I applaud the entire production though because it never slipped into maudlin sentimentality. Instead it was a real story the way the Vietnam War affected us all; it was easy to relate to it.

The scenes in the veterans' hospital are particularly upsetting as we watch these young men gradually learn to live with their broken bodies. The audience is not spared the actualities of their care and of their suffering. However, as the film moves on, we get to know the Jon Voight character and the romantic scene between him and Fonda plays as bittersweet reality. Years have now past since the Vietnam War, but this film brings it all back. And it does this without one scene being placed in Vietnam itself. A fine film. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most important films on Vietnam!
Review: This movie really blew me away. I rented it the other day not expecting much, but after the movie ended I realized how wrong I was! Jon Voight does an incredible job as the wheelchair-bound Vietnam War vet who falls for Jane Fonda. Bruce Dern is almost as good in his portrayel of Fonda's husband, who goes to fight in the jungles of 'Nam while Fonda & Voight fall in love. I've never been a big Jane Fonda fan because of her actions duing the war, but she did a very good job. However, I don't think it was academy award winning acting. Jon Voight's award was well deserved, though. One of my favorite moments is when he talks to the high school students at the end. The film is great & I loved it, but it's far from perfect. For example, the movie ends rather abruptly without totally resolving the plot. And how come one of the last things we see is Bruce Dern's rear!!! It adds absolutely nothing to the plot & takes away some of the power of Jon Voight's speech. One last thing I've got to mention is the awesome music. I've never heard so many great '60s songs in one film, and they add so much to the movie's dramatic mood. I especially liked the song "Once I Was" by Tim Buckley played during Jon Voight's speech at the end. I highly recommend this film for everyone (except kids!).

Rating:
Summary: Good, but...
Review: What's really good about this film is the music, the depiction of the horror of war outside the battlefield (the VA hospital with its mutilated veterans), Jane Fonda's character development and John Voigt's very convincing role as the main protagonist. The weakest point is Bruce Dern as the Marine Corps captain. Unlike Voigt he was not an enlisted man, for to be a captain at that time without ever having been to Nam would mean he is career and certainly not unaware of the kinds of experiences he could expect in Nam. His emotional disintegration once he spends a tour of duty in country spanks of hollywood manipulation. Whereas the Voigt and Fonda characters undergo a gradual transformation, as a Nam vet I find Capt. Bob's emotional breakdown totally unconvincing (unless of course one accepts the idea that he can't handle getting a medal for having accidentally shot himself ). However, if one can work around these problems, and most viewers probably can, the remainder of the film is excellent, if Hollywoodish. A final point - rather than compare this film with films like Platoon, Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, and even Apocalypse Now, one should view them as individual pieces in a complicated tapestry. For each of them in their own way helps contribute to grasping the absurdity of that conflict (and perhaps war in general).

Rating:
Summary: A worthy classic
Review: When I was very little, some of my friends' fathers who had seen action in World War II were a little odd. Some of them were physically maimed too. A missing thumb. A metal plate where a jaw should have been. You didn't stare and it was rude to ask questions.

Even as a young adult, I had friends who had married "older" men who had seen action in Europe. One had lost a leg at the Normandy landing. It was unusual by then-even a little glamorous. The only inconvenience we were really aware of (other than that limp, of course) was that he had to spring the extra bucks in order to purchase a car with automatic transmission.

The saying "History is written by the victors" is generally true. Viet Nam changed all that. In fact, in the manner of enormous change and disillusionment, it eventually tipped perceptions too far the other way. Seeing "Coming Home" twenty-three years after watching it for the first time, I was still profoundly moved. In retrospect it seems at times pedantic and some of the relatively minor scenes are almost archetypal.

Despite this, it builds to a shattering climax. Jon Voight (Luke Martin) is excellent as a bitter paraplegic- his performance is better, in fact, as Martin at the nadir of his convalescence. Jane Fonda's performance (Sally Hyde) is strong but at times rather low-key, reflecting perhaps, her role as a stoic military wife. Penelope Milford gives a powerful performance as Vi, the worldly wise friend Sally acquires after the men in their lives go overseas. The scene where Vi "freaks out" is a little unconvincing. The insouciant Vi, who has suffered the heartbreak of her brother's meaningless suicide, should break down in even more excruciating fashion.

Today the officers' wives club in the film seems laughable but was probably not as far-fetched then, when "politically correct" was in a profound state of flux. And it would be nice to think that the FBI surveillance of Luke Martin, merely for chaining himself to a gate at Marine recruiting headquarters, could not happen today.

The film does a good job of paralleling the slow healing process of Luke Martin with the inexorable descent into misery of Sally's once gung-ho Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern, whose performance was well deserving of his supporting-Oscar award). There is even a nice little foreshadowing at the Officers Club the night before Bob leaves for Viet Nam. His Colonel sends his wife to wish him well; he himself can't make it because he has a chess game. These undervalued veterans had to endure not only combat but also the angry scorn of people back home. This wasn't the first American film up to that date to examine war and find it wanting. Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) showed what a farce military discipline could be during World War I. William Wyler's "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) was a thoughtful film about the trials of returning World War II veterans.

But Viet Nam was the first war the Americans well and truly lost, and as such was the first one to be examined with so much contemporary criticism. "Coming Home" is in that sense a "coming of age" film. It seems ironic that we have to be reminded how hard it is to be a warrior. But we do.