The question can any movie about war be anti war ? Coming Home answers it . The main characters Sally and Bob Hyde ( Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern ) and Luke Martin ( Jon Voight) are not anti war but each experience it in a way that leaves them feeling different by the end. They are forced to learn nothing is as neat and simple about fighting in a war or trying to cope with it at home. Luke is already there as the movie opens. Sally slowly comes evolves of the course of the story and Fonda gives a natural and often restrained performance. She plays against type but Sally is never gung ho for the war or and anti war activists at the end it's far more nuanced than that. By the end Luke has evolved as well from angry and frustrated to accepting what is and sharing his experience and how it changed him.

Bob Hyde is the most lost by the end and what made sense about his service, the war and his wife no longer make sense for him. The ending leaves many things unanswered but perhaps that's how it should be instead of neatly tying it together. It is possible that the fate of one character makes things possible for the other two but even that is left unresolved.

These are ordinary people at the beginning and by the end they are still every day people but they change . One interesting thing is it's not a movie about showing the battles on the field it's about the internal and external battles we have with ourselves and the affects of war.

Sally (Jane Fonda) has a husband fighting in Vietnam and she feels optimistic about American involvement there. However she works at a hospital as a nurse and soon becomes caretaker of a bitter war veteran named Luke (Jon Voight).

At first, she is repelled by him - but over time grows to love him and admires his cause. (Luke feels the Vietnam War is a mistake and that countless innocent lives are being pointlessly lost.) "Coming Home" is the quintessential Vietnam War film - it's anti-war, pessimistic, gritty, depressing, and ultimately sort of whining. Some Vietnam films to go a bit overboard on the "tears for the poor souls" stuff and become very politically correct - "Coming Home" is like this and that might turn some viewers off.

However I thought the plot, characters, directing and writing were all interesting. Hal Ashby ("Shampoo") shows talent behind the camera and Jon Voight and Jane Fonda display chemistry in front of it.

I'm not typically a fan of Voight (or even Fonda to be honest) but they both do a good job here. Voight's final rousing speech to the classroom of students at the movie is simultaneously touching and uplifting. And the love scene is handled with care and doesn't seem gratuitous or unnecessary.

"Coming Home" may have its flaws, but I think it's one of the better "Vietnam movies" to come out of the era. You should see it if you enjoyed "The Deer Hunter" or "Platoon."

I'd seen this movie a couple of times, the first time in the theater when it came out.

At that time, it seemed we'd learned a lesson about war. Viet Nam was over.

So watching it again last night was even more poignant - did we really learn anything, back then? I don't think this is a heavily politicized movie, although it doesn't really show any positive effects of war, doesn't say anything positive about fighting in Viet Nam. How could it, really? They had the recruiter speaking at the high school, about duty and honor and serving the country, all true. But could he say, about Viet Nam, that we "won" or "freed" anyone?

So showing an unflinching catalog of the aftermath of battle becomes anti-war, simply because war is horrible. Very little dialog is devoted to telling us war is wrong. We can decide for ourselves based on what we see.

Another comment says this: "One could actually describe the film as the 1970s' answer to William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). " That's an excellent point. Nothing was said in "Best Years" (one of my favorite movies) that was anti-war. In fact, there is a scene in that film where the lead characters get in a fist fight with a man who says the war was a mistake. But we still saw the aftermath, the horrible wounds inflicted, the PTSD that they called "shell shock" back then, the disruption in home life, the difficulty resuming life at home. The film manages to tell the truth about war (up to a point) without being "anti-war".

Fonda's character does not become politicized. She wakes up to a certain extent but never takes a side on the issue. She supports her husband and hurts when he hurts. She supports Voight's character and hurts when he hurts. She's compassionate with the soldiers she encounters at her job. She never comments on whether Viet Nam was right or wrong. She only reacts to the pain she sees around her. Taking off her bra and letting her hair curl again, dressing like a hippy, aren't political statements about war. That was just the end of the 50's/early 60's mentality she'd been living under.

Dern's character doesn't have a lot of screen time but what he does have is riveting. He's tormented. He has no opinion about whether "the" war is right or wrong, only that "war" is awful.

People can say what they want about Fonda, but she plays this one pretty close to the vest. Her character never says "Gee, we shouldn't have gone to Viet Nam." She reacts with compassion, not judgment or recrimination.

I don't necessarily like Fonda in most films, but her turn in this one is excellent. Voight and Dern are likewise excellent, making us feel the confusion, anger and pain of their characters.

A classic movie that everyone should see.