Coming Home

I really enjoyed Coming Home and feel it is movie we have watched so far. I think the first film I ever saw Voight in was a movie called The Champ, another 70’s film (1979.) Most recently he plays a bad guy in the television series 24. Obviously he is much younger in this film.

I thought Voight’s and Jane Fonda’s acting was both superb. Even when it was just at the way they looked at each other, the silence spoke a thousand words. Reminds me of the scene where the brother was talking to his sister outside the hospital and mention that they just had a conversation without speaking.

I thought the opening of the movie was very interesting, the way they kept on going back and forth between a healthy man running and a vet hospital where a majority of the vets were unable to walk. It was quite a contrast and you knew they were setting you up for something.

I think that Bruce Dern’s character doesn’t kill himself. I think he just strips himself of all the weight he is carrying and begins a journey to start over, fresh and free from the horror he brought back with him. Although it would be ironic, that the man who was not able to walk ever again was able to figure out a way to cope and the man who we see excited to go and still come back with the ability to live a normal life, take its toll enough to where he does kill himself.

In the end, the healthy, gun ho man we see running in the beginning is now broken and shattered by his experience in the war and the man who was unable to walk and bitter was now able to cope with his place after the war.

I liked the way the last scene ends with Fonda’s character opening the door and it says “out” the film ends immediately after that.