Video Commentary

Homecoming Screen

The 10 best movies about the veteran's experience -- In honor of Memorial Day, we examine how Hollywood has depicted the difficulties of the transition from combat to civilian life
| May 30, 2008
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Coming Home: Everett Collection

Coming Home

(1978)

Jon Voight (shown, with Jane Fonda) won an Oscar for his role as Luke, a paraplegic Vietnam vet (modeled on Ron Kovic of Born on the Fourth of July fame) who overcomes his bitterness when he meets veterans' hospital volunteer Sally (Fonda, who also won an Oscar). As their friendship blossoms into an affair, Luke learns that he can still have a romantic and sexual life, as the film demonstrates in a famously tender and frank love scene. Alas, Sally is married, and when her Marine husband (Bruce Dern) returns from combat, he has his own psychic and physical scars to cope with, along with his wife's infidelity. Fonda, of course, had been notorious for her offscreen opposition to the war, but she commissioned the screenplay and surprised everyone by making a film that wasn't so much antiwar as pro-veteran.