Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

bkoganbing When all is said and done despite the Vietnam War and its aftermath for those who went and survived, Coming Home is your romantic triangle movie. Jane Fonda is married to Marine captain Bruce Dern who has been sent over to Vietnam in 1968 at the height of the hostilities. Wanting to do something to show she's behind her husband's endeavors, Fonda volunteers in a veteran's hospital and there meets paralyzed sergeant Jon Voight who is having trouble adjusting. She certainly helps him adjust.A lot of Coming Home with the veteran scenes is taken from The Men, the film about a VA hospital where in his cinematic debut Marlon Brando played a paralyzed veteran of Korea. That too was a war where we had no defined objectives in fact Harry Truman called it a 'police action'. Voight is a paraplegic just as Brando was, but as we find out at least there is one part of his anatomy that he and Fonda are grateful still functions.Which brings another movie comparison that of The Sun Also Rises where hero Jake Barnes is rendered impotent by his injuries. In the film adaption of that Hemingway novel Tyrone Power can only sit on the side as the woman he loves goes from man to man. Impotence is a subject even now most are reluctant to treat in film.But Voight helped by Fonda adjusts to his reduced life and in the end finds meaning and purpose. Dern who returns a medal winner cannot adjust and is inspired by Norman Maine. Both Voight and Fonda won Oscars for their roles, the best in leading categories. It is a pity Bruce Dern was not given a nomination as Best Supporting Actor. In many ways he outclasses both the leads in Coming Home.Coming Home could be remade today with the survivors of Afghanistan and Iraq. Just change those Sixties fashions.

Blake Peterson Coming Home is an eclipse of a romantic drama, one in which there are no clear signs of who should be with who or what should happen to who and who deserves what. Its characters are damaged in one way or another; most are trying to figure out what to do with their fragmented lives. Should they do what is considered to be the right thing? Or should they follow their heart and try to avoid causing even more damage as a result? Taking place in 1968, America has become shattered and unintentionally cynical. With the Vietnam War as a backdrop to everyday life, most are sick and tired of living under the societal pretensions of the previous decades; anger is prevalent, but an outreach of peace is too. Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) has always been a wife first and a person second, so when her husband, Bob (Bruce Dern), goes off to fight in Vietnam, she finds herself uncertain of her priorities. She has never had to work a day in her life, and she's never been looked at as anything other than another man's property.With Bob gone, she finally has the chance to become the independent woman she never thought she could be. Sally, along with her friend Vi (Penelope Milford), decide to volunteer at the local V.A. hospital. There, she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), a past acquaintance who is back from Vietnam after an accident leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. Luke is understandably upset with how his life has turned out, and as Sally gets to know him, she not only develops feelings for him, but she also finds herself more aware of the mess the U.S. is in. She still loves her husband, but he has grown increasingly distant after facing violence on such a regular basis. When he comes home, Sally is forced to decide whether to remain a wife or start her life anew.Coming Home isn't a women's picture as its plot might suggest; it's something much closer to the heart and something more important to American history than a drama where romantic triangles run amok. It is one of the most essential films of the 1970s. Painting an unfiltered picture of life after Vietnam, it is by turns humanizing, upsetting, and moving. The characters are completely different people by the end of the film: Sally starts as a quiet housewife and ends as a woman in touch with her surroundings and her personal needs; Luke goes from the mindset of a bitter victim to an impassioned protester; Bob sheds his typical spousal roles and becomes an emotionally impaired disaster. Such transitions are risky, as they may not always ring true in the development of a certain figure. But Coming Home never stops being earnest. It could be moralizing, but like Sally, we are left to make our own decisions.Ashby, a seminal director of the decade, doesn't pick sides, preferring to let his characters go loose and see what paths they set for themselves. Like Robert Altman or John Cassavetes, you can feel his presence, but his presence does not interfere with the naturalness of any given situation. The Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, golden era Beatles, and Jefferson Airplane play at a near constant pace, almost as if Ashby is trying to remind us that times are changing and the world isn't what it used to be. It used to be a place where people only really "made it" if they got married and settled into domestic bliss. But now, with its preference for soft rock and free love, America isn't content to simply settle. Coming Home carries a restless energy; moving forward, not backward, is the only option. Fonda, Voight, and Dern are all outstanding, even if the third act leaps into melodramatic territory and betrays the realism set so effortlessly in the first two. The '70s explored film in a way that no other decade has, and Coming Home serves as one of the most authentic excursions into a culturally relevant topic. It's a life-on-the-home-front picture that makes life on the home front seem just as alien as life on the battlefield.Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

MartinHafer I know that "Coming Home" won several Oscars and is considered a classic, but I have one major gripe with this film. While I liked the film overall, I truly hated the film's soundtrack. Instead of incidental music, the film is FILLED with nothing but late 60s rock and roll in scene after scene after scene. This sort of thing started in the 1970s and a ton of films were just jam-packed full of pop or rock songs. But, it's very distracting to me--and I hate that there aren't enough quiet moments in the film and it feels, at times, like I'm watching MTV and not a serious drama. And, compared to other films that shove song after song into them (like "American Graffiti"), "Coming Home" is much, much more invasive in its use of music. The bottom line is that I HATED the soundtrack! The film is about a woman (Jane Fonda) who is home waiting for her husband (Bruce Dern) to return from his tour of duty in Vietnam. To fill her time, she volunteers to work with disabled men at the local VA hospital. Soon, she develops a relationship with a bitter paraplegic (Jon Voight). Over time, he lets go of much of his anger and he and Fonda have an affair. The impact of this on their marriage and Voight's subsequent anti-war crusade make up much of the rest of the film.The acting was pretty good--particularly Voight. As for Fonda, I thought she was just okay and wonder if her receiving the Oscar (along with Voight) was more of an anti-war statement or a show of support for her behaviors during the war. Or, possibly it was just a slow year. All I know is that I expected something more for a prize-winning performance. As for the story, it's very much anti-war--and emphasizes the emotional and physical toll on the men who fight. This is something applicable to all wars--not just Vietnam. This universality is heightened by having no footage of the war. Without the terrible music, I'd give this one a 9--with it, 7. Yes, the music was THAT annoying.By the way, this is a very adult film. It contains nudity and lots of harsh language. So, this is probably not a film to show your mother-in-law or a pre-school class.

runamokprods 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.