Coming Home
The opening scene where the vets in the hospital are talking was unscripted. They were real Vietnam vets discussing their own views about the war. Jon Voight was supposed to have added to the dialogue, but out of respect, stayed silent and listened.,Not only is Bob's long hair and mustache out of place for a Marine captain, there isn't a military haircut on any able-bodied soldier in the film.,Wounded Vet #1: Some of us, not all of us, some of us need to justify to ourselves what the f*ck we did there. So, if we come back and say what we did was a waste, what happened to us was a waste, some of us can't live with it.
Wounded Vet #2: So, they'd do it again.
Wounded Vet #1: So they say, well, they gotta keep, man, they gotta make, you know, inside of themselves, they're lyin' to themselves, continuously, saying, "What I did, was okay, because this is what I got from it, man. I have to justify being paralyzed. I have to justify killing people. So, I say it was okay." But, how many guys, though, can make the reality and say, "What I did was wrong and what all this other sh*t was wrong, man" - and still be able to live with themselves, because they're crippled for the rest of their f*ckin' life.,Four members of the film crew are designated as "Friends who did everything".,When released theatrically in Ontario, Canada. The Ontario board of Censors made cuts to the love scene between Jon Voigt and Jane Fonda for a 'Restricted' rating.,Featured in The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: Bruce Dern/Robert Klein/Susan Sullivan/Dr. Carl Sagan (1978),Hey Jude
Written by Paul McCartney (uncredited) and John Lennon (uncredited)
Performed by The Beatles (as Beatles)
EMI Records Inc.,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.,