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Coming Home Details

1978 Certificate 18
  • Rated:
  • 70
  • from 545 members

When Sally Hyde's (Jane Fonda) husband, a ramrod-straight marine captain, Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), is sent to Vietnam, she leaves the isolated world of the officer's quarters and begins volunteer social work at the veterans hospital. There her unthinking support of the war and her blindness to its effects are challenged by .. Read more

Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Robert Carradine
Director Hal Ashby
Genres Drama

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Coming Home

When Sally Hyde's (Jane Fonda) husband, a ramrod-straight marine captain, Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), is sent to Vietnam, she leaves the isolated world of the officer's quarters and begins volunteer social work at the veterans hospital. There her unthinking support of the war and her blindness to its effects are challenged by meeting the crippled men struggling to recover, psychologically as well as physically, from their time in battle. Many, like Luke Martin (Jon Voight), now a paraplegic, are embittered and full of unfocused, uncontrollable rage, which he takes out on the prim, controlled Sally. Interestingly, they went to the same large high school, but she was a pretty, popular cheerleader type and he was just a guy in the back of the class. Gradually, as she changes politically (always signaled by changes in hair and fashion) and he recovers emotionally, they become friends and then lovers. This causes a sexual awakening in Sally that furthers her transformation from a repressed wife to an independent woman. Then her husband comes home.
Hal Ashby's film, with its classic rock soundtrack and lush photography by Haskel Wexler, submerged its politics in a warm nostalgia, although it was made just a few years after the war ended. It's theme of individual transformation, both political and sexual, struck a chord with baby boomer audiences who all felt, to varying degrees, that they had done the same thing. Both Fonda and Voight received the 1978 Academy Awards for their strong acting.

Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Robert Carradine, Penelope Milford
Director Hal Ashby
Studio MGM ENTERTAINMENT
Run time DVD: 2 hrs 2 mins
Certificate Certificate 18
Genres Drama
Language DVD: English
Released DVD: 07 Jun 2004
Production year: 1978
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (3) of Coming Home

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  • 4 stars out of 5

    High-powered, Oscar-winning performances by Jon Voight and Jane Fonda are the big attraction of this post-Vietnam melodrama. The film is set on the home front, and centres on the romance between an embittered paraplegic and a Marine captain's wife, working as a volunteer in a veteran's hospital. Bruce Dern is also topnotch as Fonda's husband. The screenplay — based on a story commissioned by Fonda, a highly vocal Vietnam War activist — skirts close to sentimentality, if not soap opera at points. But it too won an Oscar, and only a hard heart would remain unmoved by the finished movie.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006

  • Hal (Shampoo) Ashby takes on (and makes disposable) America's post-Vietnam guilt, with a supremely sentimental tale of... read more on Time Out

    • Time Out
    • Posted 04 Nov 2008

  • Most helpful member's review of Coming Home

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  • 2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    Another lost gem

    A film you don't hear about much these days, but it's all there, quality actor, good story and amazing soundtrack, Recommended

      • Chris Collinson from London, England
      • Posted 10 Feb 2005 13:46

  • Most recent members' review of Coming Home

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  • Rated - 5 stars

    Have we learnt are lesson...

    Man,what a film! The hellish side of the sixties telling us that war sucks. The idea was in 1978 a movie could change the integral forward marching system of war. This is the power of a movie. It was done after WWII but about the other side. Then we were the heroes; now,in the sixties maybe you wanted that feeling again. Trouble is now things are different. As Luke points out in the film, he's not sure who the enemy is.

    The power of music. This music wasn't written for the film. I don't think the film was written for the music, but it speaks with one voice.

    One of the best films I've ever seen...

    • imountie
      • imountie from Islington, London - on the cheap side
      • Posted 10 May 2009 21:16

  • News and features

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    Jersey Girl

    Monster-in-Law motivates Fonda

    • 05 May 2005

    Jane Fonda makes her first film appearance in 15 years when she stars alongside Jennifer Lopez, in the new release Monster-In-Law. The new film, which hits UK cinema screens from May 13th, will see Fonda play a mother-in-law-from-hell television presenter, who tries to stop her son from marrying Lopez's character. Speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fonda revealed that part of the inspiration behind her character was her ex-husband and CNN founder Ted Turner. "You can't live with Read more

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Rating breakdown

545 Member ratings
  • 100
58
  • 90
54
  • 80
117
  • 70
102
  • 60
92
  • 50
49
  • 40
28
  • 30
17
  • 20
19
  • 10
9

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      • When Sally Hyde's (Jane Fonda) husband, a ramrod-straight marine captain, Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), is sent to Vietnam, she leaves the isolated world of the officer's quarters and begins volunteer ...