Movie · 1978 · Drama, Romance, War · 2h 7m · R · English
Curator score: 6.3/10 (26.9K ratings)
A man who believed in war! A man who believed in nothing! And a woman who believed in both of them!
Overview
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.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.3/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.77/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: 61
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Hal Ashby
Production
United Artists, Jerome Hellman Productions, Jayne Productions Inc
Cast
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
Curator Review
Verdict
A humane, politically charged Vietnam-era drama that blends romance, anti-war critique, and wounded-character study with real emotional force. It’s especially strong on performance, period texture, and the way it treats veterans’ trauma as lived reality rather than plot decoration.
Best for
viewers interested in anti-war dramas
fans of 1970s American cinema
audiences who like character-driven romance
people drawn to performances about trauma and recovery
viewers interested in post-Vietnam cultural reckoning
Skip if
you want a straightforward battlefield war movie
you prefer fast pacing and constant plot turns
you dislike melodrama or emotional restraint
you want an apolitical or purely nostalgic period piece
Overview
Coming Home is one of the defining post-Vietnam films of the 1970s, but what makes it endure is not just its politics. Hal Ashby turns the story into a quiet, painful study of people trying to live inside the damage war leaves behind, and he lets the romance emerge from that damage rather than distract from it. The result is intimate, sad, and unusually compassionate.
Worth noting
Jane Fonda gives the film its emotional and moral center, while Jon Voight and Bruce Dern embody two very different forms of masculine fracture. The movie is strongest when it observes how war reshapes desire, identity, and domestic life, and when it refuses easy judgments about any of its characters. It can feel deliberately measured, but that control is part of its power.
Bottom line
If you respond to 1970s American dramas that combine social conscience with real feeling, this is essential viewing. It is less a conventional war film than a reckoning with the home front, the body, and the cost of patriotism.
Top Letterboxd reviews
eely (3.5★) · 411 likes
how much do you think jane fonda hated having a republican lick her titty
Sean Baker · 165 likes
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
Rizki (4★) · 121 likes
Look, I do, too, hate what Fonda’s character, Sally Hyde, did to her husband while he was away in the service. But I won’t go into it further, as it’s better left to each viewer’s personal judgment.
If we ask the question, ‘Can any film about war be anti-war?’ Coming Home could be one of the best answers. The main characters—Sally (Jane Fonda), Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), and Luke Martin (Jon Voight)—are not explicitly anti-war (well, perhaps Luke is), but… more
Jackson (4★) · 114 likes
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.
Justin Peterson (3★) · 95 likes
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… more