Coming Home (1978) * * *

Directed by:  Hal Ashby

Starring:  Jon Voight, Jane Fonda, Penelope Milford, Robert Carradine, Bruce Dern

Coming Home was one of two 1978 films to deal with the negative effects the Vietnam War had on those who fought it.    The other was The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture that year.     Coming Home works strongly for the most part, but trips up somewhat at the end because it doesn't quite know what it wants to say about Bruce Dern's character.     What happens to him, like his character, is left ambiguous.     

The film opens in 1968.     Sally Hyde (Fonda) sees her husband Bob (Dern), a career Marine, off to another tour of duty in Vietnam.     She is loyal and dutiful, which pleases Bob because he is someone who doesn't appear to like being questioned or second-guessed.     However, during Bob's absence, the lonely Sally volunteers at the local VA hospital.      She wants to give back to those who served and live with some sort of purpose.     This is not something Bob would agree with.     "I don't want you to work!" he protests when she later visits him in Hong Kong.   

There she meets Luke Martin (Voight), an angry Veitnam Marine paralyzed from the waist down due to shrapnel in his back.     At first he is bitter and acts out, but soon begins to focus his energies more positively and with purpose.     He sees too many Americans returning from war wounded physically and, in the case of his friend Bill (Carradine), mentally.     He falls for Sally, who he vaguely knew in high school, and upon release is determined to take some sort of stand against the war that crippled him.   

After Bill's suicide in the VA hospital, Luke chains himself to the local Marine Recruiting Office gates so no one could enter or exit.     He gets TV coverage before his arrest, where he explains his reasons for his actions and his anger towards the war.     Sally bails him out and falls for him, mostly because she would not dream of committing such an overt act of defiance.     He has the passion that she has repressed over years of being a wife of a Marine.

Luke's acts, however, cause him to be surveilled by Army Intelligence, which causes the affair to be exposed to Bob when he returns home with a wounded leg.    How Bob got the wounded leg is something that causes him shame as a proud Marine.     Distant and emotionally stunted even before the wound, the injury forces Bob to go over the edge mentally.    

Up until Bob's return home, Coming Home is a powerful character study of Luke and Sally, who learn to be different people than when the war started.     They are compassionate people who care for others.    Both are also realistic, knowing full well that their affair will be over when Bob returns.     Neither wants to hurt Bob.     These are good people caught up in a bad time.     But what exactly are Bob's feelings toward the affair?    When he first meets with Luke, he doesn't confront him about the affair, but about the fact that he's under surveillance.     Bob's further explanations of his feelings don't illuminate much either.     What exactly is angering him?    The film skirts around this for some unknown reason.     Regardless, Dern's performance is still effective as almost the antithesis of Luke.   Voight and Fonda won Oscars for their performances and they were well-deserved.     It's especially moving to hear Voight's argument to high schoolers as to why they shouldn't go to Vietnam.     It has more to do with the pain in his heart than any physical pain he suffered.