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We are republishing this review in honor of the 10th anniversary of the passing of Roger Ebert . Read why one of our contributors chose this review here .

Sally Hyde makes an ideal wife for a Marine: She is faithful, friendly, sexy in a quiet way, and totally in agreement with her husband's loyalties. Since his basic loyalty is to the Marine Corps, that presents difficulties at times. ("You know what they tell them," a girlfriend says. "'If the Marine Corps had wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one.'") Still, she's reasonably happy in the spring of 1968, as her husband prepares to ship out for a tour of duty in Vietnam. There's every chance he'll get a promotion over there. And the war, of course, is for a just cause, isn't it? It has to be, or we wouldn't be fighting it.

That is the Sally Hyde at the beginning of Hal Ashby's "Coming Home," an extraordinarily moving film. The Sally Hyde at the end of the film -- about a year later -- is a different person, confused in her loyalties, not sure of her beliefs, awakened to new feelings within her. She hasn't turned into a political activist or a hippie or any of those other radical creatures of the late 1960s. But she is no longer going to be able to accept anything simply because her husband, or anybody else, says it's true.

"Coming Home" considers a great many subjects, but its heart lies with that fundamental change within Sally Hyde. She is played by Jane Fonda as the kind of character you somehow wouldn't expect the outspoken, intelligent Fonda to play. She's reserved, maybe a little shy, of average intelligence and tastes. She was, almost inevitably, a cheerleader in high school. She doesn't seem to have a lot of ideas or opinions. Perhaps she even doubts that it's necessary for her to have opinions -- her husband can have them for her.

When her husband ( Bruce Dern ) goes off to fight the war, though, she finds herself on her own for the first time in her life. There's no home, no high school, no marriage, no Officers' Club to monitor her behavior. And she finds herself stepping outside the role of a wife and doing ... well, not strange things, but things that are a little unusual for her. Like buying a used sports car. Like renting a house at the beach. Like volunteering to work in the local Veterans' Administration hospital. That's where she meets Luke ( Jon Voight ), so filled with his pain, anger, and frustration. She knew him vaguely before; he was the captain of the football team at her high school. He went off to fight the war, came home paralyzed from the waist down, and now, strapped on his stomach to a table with wheels, uses canes to propel himself furiously down hospital corridors. In time, he will graduate to a wheelchair. He has ideas about Vietnam that are a little different from her husband's.

"Coming Home" is uncompromising in its treatment of Luke and his fellow paraplegics, and if that weren't so the opening sequences of the film wouldn't affect us so deeply. Luke literally runs into Sally on their first meeting, and his urine bag spills on the floor between them. That's the sort of embarrassment he has to learn to live with -- and she too, if she is serious about being a volunteer.

She is, she finds. Luke in the early days is a raging troublemaker, and the hospital staff often finds it simpler just to tranquilize him with medication. Zombies are hardly any bother at all. Sally tries to talk to Luke, gets to know him, invites him for dinner. He begins to focus his anger away from himself and toward the war; he grows calmer, regains maturity. One day, softly, he tells her: "You know there's not an hour goes by that I don't think of making love with you."

They do eventually make love, confronting his handicap in a scene of great tenderness, beauty, and tact. It is the first time Sally has been unfaithful. But it isn't really an affair; she remains loyal to her husband, and both she and Luke know their relationship will have to end when her husband returns home. He does, too soon, having accidentally wounded himself, and discovers from Army Intelligence what his wife has been up to. The closing scenes show the film at its most uncertain, as if Ashby and his writers weren't sure in their minds how the Dern character should react. And so Dern is forced into scenes of unfocused, confused anger before the film's not very satisfying ending. It's too bad the last twenty minutes don't really work, though, because for most of its length "Coming Home" is great filmmaking and great acting.

And it is also greatly daring, since it confronts the relationship between Fonda and Voight with unusual frankness -- and with emotional tenderness and subtlety that is, if anything, even harder to portray.

Consider. The film has three difficulties to confront in this relationship, and it handles all three honestly. The first is Voight's paralysis: "You aren't one of these women that gets turned on by gimps?" he asks. She is not. The second is the sexual and emotional nature of their affair, an area of enormous dramatic danger, which the movie handles in such a straightforward way, and with such an obvious display of affection between the characters, that we accept and understand.

The third is the nature of the friendship between Voight and Fonda, and here "Coming Home" works on a level that doesn't depend on such plot elements as the war, the husband, the paralysis, the time and place, or anything else. Thinking about the movie, we realize that men and women have been so polarized in so many films, have been made into so many varieties of sexual antagonists or lovers or rivals or other couples, that the mutual human friendship of these two characters comes as something of a revelation.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Coming Home (1978)

127 minutes

Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde

Jon Voight as Luke Martin

Bruce Dern as Bob Hyde

Robert Carradine as Bill Munson

Penelope Milford as Vi Munson

Robert Ginty as Sergeant Mobley

Rita Taggart as Johnson

Directed by

Produced by.

• Jerome Hellman

Screenplay by

• Robert C. Jones

Cinematography by

• Haskell Wexler

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‘Coming Home’ (1978): An Understated Brilliant Film About After Effects of War

In 1978, Hollywood was finally prepared to deal with the war in Vietnam on film. For years it had been more or less a taboo subject, an open wound no one wanted to discuss or see. However in 1976 director Francis Ford Coppola head to the jungle to make Apocalypse Now (1979), which most thought would be the first film to deal with the war, but no one counted on how long it would take Coppola to make and cut the film.

The first to deal openly and honestly with the war was Coming Home (1978) a superb film about the impact of the war on the men who fought it and their wives. Jane Fonda was the driving force behind the film, shepherding the project from the first script, finding a director she trusted and helping cast the film. The picture deals with a woman, portrayed by Fonda, who watches her war happy husband go off to war leaving her behind to fend for herself. Volunteering at a local veterans hospital she meets someone from her high school years, paralyzed from the waist down as a result of an injury he sustained in the war, and they fall in love. When her husband returns he is a changed man, betrayed by the war, by his country and he learns his wife now likes another man.

For the role of Luke Martin, the paralyzed veteran, Jack Nicholson was approached and wanted the part, but his agreements to do other films stood in his way. AL Pacino and Sylvester Stallone were asked, but eventually the role went to Jon Voight who had been circling the role of the husband, which went to Bruce Dern. Fonda of course would portray Sally Hyde, the woman in the middle of the men, and who grows as a person on her own.

When Bob gets liberty in Hong Kong, Sally flies to visit him and begins to see the devastation of the war on him. He is distant, distracted, sleeps with a weapon close by and walks in circles, talking about the atrocities his men have committed. Bob has been shattered by the war like the others, he will never be the same.

Sally comes home and her relationship with Luke deepens, and a few months later she learns Bob is coming home. He is worse than he was in Hong Kong, and there are questions raised about his injury being perhaps self inflicted. When the military tells him about his wife cheating on him, he goes ballistic and turns a weapon on Sally. Luke arrives and the gun is turned on him, but the men talk their way through it and out of the situation. But Bob cannot cope with what has happened to him, and as Sally shops, and Luke speaks to a group of high schoolers about the war, Bob swims into the sea never to be seen again. The performances carry Coming Home (1978) and what magnificent performances they are. Jon Voight won the Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as the LA and New York Film Critics Awards for Best Actor, for his lovely performance as Luke. His final speech to a group of high school kids is startling in its raw emotion, and powerful feeling. His voice breaks as he speaks, as he remembers, as he regrets. This is a towering performance, one of the decades very best.

Coming Home (1978) was nominated for eight Academy Awards including nominations in all six major categories. It would win Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay, losing Best Picture and Best Director to The Deer Hunter (1978) a grave injustice that has become apparent through the years. No other film more fully explored what was happening to these men when they came home after the war, left to deal with their demons on their own. Brilliantly directed by the late, great and sadly woefully under appreciated Hal Ashby it is a quiet masterpiece that must be seen. It explores a different sort of violence that takes place during war, the violence and trauma done to the soul.

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Coming Home – film review

Coming Home (1978)

Director: Hal Ashby

Cast: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern

Run time: 126 minutes

Release Date: 15th July 2019

Format: Blu-ray

Jamie Havlin gives his thoughts on an award-winning portrait of American life set against the backdrop of the controversial war in Vietnam. Hal Ashby is a fascinating figure. He was born to a Mormon family in Utah just before the Depression plunged America into economic chaos. As a twelve-year-old, he discovered the body of his father who had committed suicide by shooting himself. He flunked out of high school and was married and divorced by the time he was seventeen.

Maybe not the kind of background you’d expect from one of the most successful directors in 1970s Hollywood. But from Harold and Maude (1971) through to Being There (1979), he directed a string of films that are still fondly remembered and critically lauded today. Arguably the most successful of these was Coming Home.

If you think America is divided today, then just imagine an even more divided nation in 1968 as the Vietnam War raged. Hollywood tends not to want to polarise potential audiences, which is why so few dramas made about the conflict surfaced while it was ongoing, the hawkish John Wayne vehicle The Green Berets being a notable exception.

A decade or so later and with the war ended, America appeared more ready to examine events in Vietnam on the big screen. The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Coming Home all attracting cinema-goers in large numbers and gaining mainly positive reviews from critics.

Coming Home opens with a scene where a group of vets in wheelchairs shoot some pool and shoot the breeze as they do so. One claims, if he was fit enough to do so, he’d go back. Most the others disagree strongly. One man Luke Martin (Jon Voight) just listens.

Silence is unusual for Luke, most of the time he’s splenetic with rage and who could blame him? His two legs paralyzed, he’s strapped to a metal trolley, stomach down, and forced to propel himself with the use of two canes if he wants to get around the hospital, due to a severe shortage of wheelchairs. Staff sometimes find it easier to tranquillise him rather than have to endure his constant tirades, especially when he starts to lash out with one of those canes.

Sally (Jane Fonda) is certainly not part of the feminist revolution when we first see her. Don’t expect her to wear flowers in her hair or flash peace signs either, albeit she doesn’t despise hippies the way her gung-ho marine captain husband does. Bob (Bruce Dern) is about to be sent on a tour of duty to Vietnam where he hopes to gain a promotion and become a major. ‘I feel like I’m off to the Olympic Games to represent the United States,’ he declares enthusiastically. I bet he loved The Green Berets.

Once he is gone, Sally decides to share a flat with far from straight-laced friend Vi Munson (Penelope Milford), whose brother Bill has returned from his draft duty suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. This leads Sally – against Bob’s chauvinistic wishes – to volunteer in a local Veterans’ Administration hospital, where Bill is a patient. Here she meets Luke, who she remembers from school. She was a cheerleader; he was the captain of the football team, the archetypal all-American boy.

Conditions for the vets frustrate Sally. ‘There’s not enough beds,’ she complains to her Officers’ Club acquaintances. ‘There’s not enough staff. It’s really crowded… They are just not prepared for the number of wounded guys that are being sent back.’

But none of them want to hear about problems like these.

Before Luke eventually confesses to her that: ‘I spend ninety-five per cent of the time at the hospital thinking of making love with you,’ we realise that the times are already a-changin’.

Coming Home is often a genuinely moving watch, albeit it is flawed. Its political message is about as subtle as a Daily Mail election editorial, and the change in Luke from embittered hothead to inspiring anti-war campaigner came about far too quickly. While the soundtrack consists of classic acts of the era such as The Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane and Smokey Robinson, much of it is not combined imaginatively with the visuals.

Two tracks near the film’s end, though, escape this criticism. Tim Hardin’s Once I Was is wonderfully poignant but even better is an eleven-minute slice of psychedelic rock/soul Time Has Come Today by The Chambers Brothers. Ashby used all eleven minutes in a tour-de-force sequence, with the action I’m guessing, written around this increasingly trippy track. It works brilliantly.

An early report during filming by studio UA maintained that Ashby had miscast his actors, and early during the shoot, Voight reputedly quit, claiming he wasn’t talented enough to do the role justice.

Strange then that the cast’s collective performances are easily the best thing about the film. Remarkably, not only did Jon Voight and Jane Fonda both pick up Best Actor/Actresses Oscar nominations but Bruce Dern and Penelope Milford were also nominated in the corresponding Supporting Actor/Actress categories.

Voight even managed to beat Robert DeNiro’s turn in The Deerhunter to pick up the gong that year and it really is high praise to say he probably just deserved to edge it.

Extras include a brand-new and exclusive audio commentary by author Scott Harrison; a feature-length commentary with actors Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler; two archival featurettes and collectors booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Scott Harrison and critic Glenn Kenny.

For more on the film: https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/coming-home/

All words by Jamie Havlin. More writing by Jamie can be found at his Louder Than War author’s archive .

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Coming Home Review

01 Jan 1978

Coming Home

Despite, in time, being overshadowed by The Deer Hunter, back at the 1979 Oscars it was Coming Home's Jon Voight who took Best Actor from beneath Robert De Niro's nose (with Jane Fonda winning that year's Best Actress).

There's a strong erotic chemistry between the leads, as wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet Voight (his career best) and politically and sexually naive army wife Fonda begin an affair while her husband (Bruce Dern) is on a tour of duty. Hal Ashby's critique of America's abandonment of the psychologically and physically wounded carefully sets itself up as anti-war, not anti-soldier – which is all the more potent in a country that now censors photos of its battlefield coffins.

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Coming Home Reviews

• 61   Metascore
• 2 hr 6 mins
• Watchlist Where to Watch

Jane Fonda and Jon Voight won Oscars for their performances in this story about the Vietnam War's effect on the American home front. Bob: Bruce Dern. Viola: Penelope Milford. Bill: Robert Carradine. Dink: Robert Ginty. Virgil: Willie Tyler. Beany: Ron Amador. Academy Awards also went to writers Nancy Dowd, Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones. Hal Ashby directed.

Nominated for eight Academy Awards--and winning for Best Actress (Jane Fonda), Best Actor (Jon Voight), and Best Original Screenplay (THE DEER HUNTER, another Vietnam film, won Best Picture and Best Director)--COMING HOME was one of the first films to deal seriously with the plight of returning Vietnam veterans. Unfortunately, it is marred by some cloying melodramatics and overly preachy politics. The story opens circa 1968, when Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), a gung-ho Marine captain, is finally going off to Vietnam on active duty. His dutiful wife, Sally (Fonda), wants to do her share and begins volunteer work at a local veterans' hospital, where she meets Luke (Jon Voight), a bitter paraplegic. Within a month Sally and Luke have learned that they went to the same high school, knew many of the same people, and have much more in common than most others at the hospital. Luke's anger begins to subside, although he begins speaking out publicly against the war. The friendship broadens Sally's perspective; soon she is becoming more liberal in her politics, more feminist in her orientation, and comfortable leading a life independent of her husband. Eventually Luke and Sally become lovers (in a R-rated scene). Their relationship is jeopardized, however, when Bob is wounded in the leg and comes home from the war a changed man--taciturn but potentially violent. While COMING HOME has its heart in the right place, the script by Salt and Jones is too pat, and Ashby's direction simply too self-satisfied to be wholly effective. What does work in COMING HOME are the small, human, unguarded moments. The performances, undeniably appealing, were deservedly praised, Dern and Voight coming off best.

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Coming home.

Directed by Hal Ashby

A man who believed in war! A man who believed in nothing! And a woman who believed in both of them!

The wife of a Marine serving in Vietnam, Sally Hyde decides to volunteer at a local veterans hospital to occupy her time. There she meets Luke Martin, a frustrated wheelchair-bound vet who has become disillusioned with the war. Sally and Luke develop a friendship that soon turns into a romance.

Jane Fonda Jon Voight Bruce Dern Penelope Milford Robert Carradine Robert Ginty Mary Gregory Kathleen Miller Beeson Carroll Willie Tyler Lou Carello Charles Cyphers Olivia Cole Tresa Hughes Bruce French Mary Jackson Tim Pelt Richard Lawson Rita Taggart Claudie Watson Sally Frei Tony Santoro Pat Corley Gwen Van Dam Jim Klein Tokyo Ernie Raul Bayardo Stacey Pickren James Kindelon Show All… Joey Faustine Arthur Rosenberg David Clennon Kimberly Binion Gary Downey Jonathan Banks Marc McClure Haskell Wexler Hugh Farrington Mark Carlton

Director Director

Producers producers.

Charles Mulvehill Jerome Hellman Bruce Gilbert

Writers Writers

Waldo Salt Robert C. Jones

Story Story

Casting casting.

Lynn Stalmaster

Editor Editor

Don Zimmerman

Cinematography Cinematography

Haskell Wexler

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Jim Bloom Charles Myers

Lighting Lighting

Camera operator camera operator.

Donald E. Thorin

Production Design Production Design

Michael D. Haller

Art Direction Art Direction

James L. Schoppe

Set Decoration Set Decoration

George Gaines

Title Design Title Design

Sound sound.

Jeff Wexler Frank E. Warner Robert Knudson

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Gary Liddiard

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Lynda Gurasich

United Artists Jerome Hellman Productions Jayne Productions Inc

Releases by Date

15 feb 1978, 31 may 1978, 02 jun 1978, 01 sep 1978, 09 sep 1978, 01 jan 2005, 11 jun 2003, releases by country.

• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical VM14

Netherlands

• TV 12 Nederland 2
• Physical 12 DVD
• Theatrical R

127 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by ele 🪷 ★★★½ 8

how much do you think jane fonda hated having a republican lick her titty

Review by Sean Baker 8

Revisited after many years. Not my fave Ashby but I love how he tackles the emotionally and physically damaged lives of veterans and their civil rights through a very human, complicated love story.

Due to lack of time, I can't add much to these logs for now. :( Maybe in the future.

Watched Kino Lorber Blu-ray

Blu-ray Extras Include: "Coming Back Home" Featurette

"Hal Ashby: A Man Out of Time" Featurette

Audio Commentary with Jon Voight, Bruce Dern and Haskel Wexler

Original Theatrical Trailer

Review by Justin Peterson ★★★

Her husband was sent off to fight in Vietnam, so she looked to occupy her time by helping those who had already returned home broken by the war. But her passion for one of these damaged men ended up becoming far greater than she ever imagined.

"What I'm saying is! I don't belong in this house, and they say I don't belong over there!"

After loving all of the quirky Hal Ashby movies I have seen so far, I would say the more serious tone he takes in Coming Home did not resonate with me nearly as much. This was nominated for Best Picture the same year as 'The Deer Hunter', an acclaimed film I consider to be highly overrated.…

Review by Jackson ★★★★

How does Hal Ashby get these songs? Each one should cost the entire movie's budget.

Coming Home is one of those movies that sneaks up on you. I didn't think I was hooked until Hal had already pulled the rug out from under me. It's gentle, but the subtle intensity behind each word builds to a tsunami. I've never seen a movie that captures the guilt of post-Vietnam soldiers with so much vulnerability. Three great performances, Voight and Fonda both winning Oscars in a year overshadowed by The Deer Hunter. Put it on your list.

Review by Catherine Stebbins ★★★★★ 2

from Top Ten By Year: 1978 #5

Three years after the Fall of Saigon there were two Best Picture nominees that directly dealt with Vietnam. One was the wholly masculine collapse-of-camaraderie film The Deer Hunter. The other was the far more liberal-minded Coming Home, about tormented veterans and a woman who comes into her own politically and sexually following her husband’s departure for Vietnam. People tend to knock Coming Home for being a war film that ‘descends’ into something as ‘cliche’ as a love triangle. Is there any easier way to dismiss a film for daring to be about the female experience of wartime? These are three people (Jon Voight and Bruce Dern are the paraplegic lover and husband respectively)…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 3

This one is a long time coming (no pun intended). I've been hearing so much about this movie and I've been trying to watch this baby for a long time but this film is like the exterior and I am the guests in El Angel Exterminador , basically for some unexplicable reason I spent an entire year uncapable of watching this because minutes later I simply forgot. That's it. Point blank.

Luckily 2021 was the year and boy I am glad it wasn't a waste at all. I don't adore Hal Ashby's movies, but there's something about his work that somewhat becomes attractive to me and have me craving for more. Maybe is the cynicism that lies underneath any of his…

Review by Josh Gillam ★★★★

It’s 1968, and the Vietnam War rages on. Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda), a military wife, has her eyes opened when she starts volunteering at a veteran’s hospital, seeing first hand the consequences of the conflict. She forms a close relationship with paraplegic former soldier Luke (Jon Voight) while her husband Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) is away fighting, in this romantic drama war film directed by Hal Ashby.

Right from the opening scene, with real veterans part of an electric improvised discussion, the themes of disillusionment and the human cost of war are highlighted, made all the more poignant by the people discussing it. The look at how veterans are treated once they come back still feels relevant, and is…

Review by Matthew Noble ★★★★★ 2

"I wish you could feel me."

Because I watch a lot of movies, I am increasingly aware of the artifice of cinema. How music is used, where plot beats will kick in, what emotions to expect. As I see it, my job as a filmgoer is to seek out films that make me forget about these mechanisms, and evoke genuine emotion or understanding.

Coming Home is one such film. As much as I enjoyed The Last Detail and Shampoo , this feels like the next level for Hal Ashby. His style has evolved, in that it feels more understated. While all those political concerns and eloquent interactions remain, they've deepened in their sincerity and conviction. Above all else, the performances are…

Review by Taylor Leverage ★★★

Jon Voight had a completely different voice as a young man than he did from middle age and beyond, definitely got scratchier and more hoarse with time. I call it Mickey Rourke Syndrome.

A Vietnam movie that has every Vietnam movie song in the soundtrack, they even play through the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil in its entirety. It's the kind of movie you'd expect to be made in the wake of a controversial war, featuring plenty of outrage and anger but not much of a real discourse, at least not until the final scenes. The film reaches for low-hanging fruit, a disillusioned and crippled veteran and the wife of a Marine that gradually comes around to support his…

Review by Wilson ★★★★ 6

Hal Ashby had the best run of any American filmmaker in the 1970s, in terms of quantity and quality. He made The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home and Being There. Seven brilliant films in nine years. However, one aspect of his career that remains a truism, throughout this, is that there is not a soft-rock song that he does not love. This glib attention to musical detail does not really impact most of his films, apart from Coming Home, where Ashby barely lets the drama get five minutes before cranking up The Beatles, The Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield et al. Considering how deeply felt the drama is, how confrontational…

Review by Andrew Boley ★★★★★

Basically the most heartbreaking mix tape ever made

Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★★ 5

While Oliver Stone and other directors showed the combat side to the hostilities in Vietnam, it was left to Hal Ashby to give us a closer look at the aftermath of the damaged psyche of both the combatants and their loved ones. By 1978 when this film came out the war was officially over, but not for those who fought in it. Set in 1968,this tender and touching drama about a woman with two very different men in her life won many fans and just as many awards. Jane Fonda plays the wife of a marine captain readying himself for his tour of duty in Vietnam. While he's away she volunteers at a veterans hospital after some initial persuasion from…

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Produced by, coming home (1978), directed by hal ashby.

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The Five‐Year Struggle to Make `Coming Home’

By Kirk Honeycu1t

• Feb. 19, 1978

M ovie making is like fighting a war,” says Jane Fonda. “Soldiers are good when they believe in what they're fighting for. The same is true for an artist: You must really want to expreis some dream or vision. Without that, eventually all the juices begin to dry up.”

The actress's military analogy is particularly apt in light of the campaign fought to bring a five-year-old dream, “Coming Home,” to the screen. A collaborative effort by several ambitious, strong‐minded individuals,- the movie r. finally emerged last week only after battles to control their vision, creative `conflicts within the group itself, casualties (one director and two writers), sudden changes in strategy and even legal arbitration. The mixed reviews the movig has received [see Vincent Canby in this issue] suggest that the film never fully rose above these conflicts, and yet

Kirk Honeycutt is a freelance writer who frequently reports on the film scene. there is enough good—and interest—in to make the story of its creation worthy of examination.

The making of virtually any movie involves some creative bloodshed, but what sets “Coming Home” apart from crank-'em-out productions is the kind of movie the film makers were aiming for. A Vietnam War story developed at time when the popularity of the subject in Hollywood was equal to that of a documentary on dysentary, it evolved out of extensive research with disabled Vietnam veterans and improvisational work by the actors until the final day of shooting. “It was not a well‐made play by Ibsen,” notes the film's producer Jerome Hellman.

Five years ago, Miss Fonda was heavily involved with the anti‐war movement, pregnant with her second child, boycotted by some theater exhibitors, “gray listed” by the film industry (“Producers were scared to use me”) and seriously considering leaving the entertainment field. But nagging at her mind was the possibility of doing a movie about the war and its impact on Americans. She formed a film company with felloW activist Bruce Gilbert, and the two began kicking ideas around.

“In our discussions, several things soon locked in,” recalls Mr. Gilbert. “It would be a home‐front story, we would attempt to re‐define what manhood and patriotism meant, and to get it financed we knew Jane needed to play a pivotal character caught between two people.”

“A close friend of mine, a Vietnam vet who is a paraplegic, said to me, ‘I've lost my body, but I've gained my mind,’ “ says Miss Fonda. “The process of his coming home to the morass of V.A. hospitals and his growing disenchantment with the war capped his innate, supple intelligence.” The story, they decided, would focus on the war's effect on three people: a paraplegic vet, a “classic Marine officer” and the officer's wife who has an affair with the vet while her husband is in Vietnam.

Writer Nancy Dowd spent more than six months fashioning a discursive, 230page screenplay called “Buffalo Ghosts.” Initially, she had resisted the idea of having a paraplegic as a key figure, but finally she accepted it. Then when cuts were requested in her lengthy • script, bitter quarrels erupted.

The writers and producers parted company. Although none of her story appears in the final movie, Miss Dowd, who later wrote the script for “Slap Shot,” does receive story credit for “Coming Home” thanks to an arbitration ruling by the Writers’ Guild.

At this point, the neophyte producers began a recruitment drive for some muscular movie talent to revive the stalemated project. Although they came aboard at separate times, the assembled team was the same that made “Midnight Cowboy” in 1969: writer Waldo Salt, director John Schlesinger and producer Jerome Hellman. Mr. Salt spent $50,000 of his own money, according to Mr. Gilbert, researching and developing his own story and characters over the next year, while Mr. Schlesinger was working on “Marathon Man” and Miss Fonda launched her return to films with “Fun With Dick and Jane.”

“We knew then that it would be a very difficult job for all of us,” explains Mr. Hellman. “So we decided on some ground rules: We wouldn't present it anywhere until we had a viable treatment that really served as an exposition of our ideas in dramatic terms; that it would fall to us to pay for that research and development ourselves; and that since our most valuable asset was ourselves asviable commodities in the business, we would all offer our services for less money as an added inducement.”

In 1975, a 65‐page treatment began making the rounds of the studios. Paramount immediately rejected it. Univeisal and United Artists, however, expressed interest. “United Artists offered a better deal,” says Mr. Hellman. “Less interference and a bigger share of the pie if it were successful. I had made two pictures for them before and on the books at least they were $20‐to $30-million to the good on their association with me, so they listened.” Fourteen months of research went into Waldo Salt's first draft, which was based on hundreds of hours of taped interviews with wounded Vietnam veterans.

Then the first of a series of blows hit the company: They lost their director. John Schlesinger, an Englishman who has done a considerable amount of work in the U.S., felt that Mr. Salt's script cut deeply into events that called for an American director. “He felt like an interloper, that he would never make the material his,” explains Mr. Hellman. “He asked to be excused.”

As a replacement, Mr. Hellman chose Hal Ashby, the witty, soft‐spoken director of “Shampoo,” “The Last Detail” and “Bound for Glory,” who suddenly became available when negotiations on another film collapsed in August 1976.

More problems. The Veterans’ Administration refused to allow filming at their spinal‐cord injury facility in Long Beach, where many of the wounded were shipped during the late 1960's. The V.A.'s chief medical director, Dr. John D. Chase, labeled the script a tissue of lies, distortions and misrepresentations and refused all cooperation. Rancho Los Amigos, a spinal‐cord facility run by the city of Downey, made available two wings that were about to be renovated. In return for their use, the film company helped fund the renovations. Ironically, no sooner had they finished shooting there, than Max Cleland, President Carter's newly appointed head of Veterans’ Affairs and a disabled Vietnam vet himself, wrote to the producer offering full cooperation.

Jon Voight, set to play the gung‐ho Marine Captain, passionately coveted the role of the paraplegic. An anti‐war activist himself, the actor had become friendly with many Vietnam veterans while speaking out against the war. United Artists, however, wanted a bigname actor. But after Sylvester Stallone and Jack Nicholson each turned it down, the producer and director decided to give Mr. Voight a chance. U.A. was horrified. “Mike Medavoy [then vice-president of production] pleaded with us and said that they would rather pay another million dollars to get a star,” relates Mr. Hellman. “Hal and I fought for John. In the end, they reluctantly agreed but said the responsibility rested entirely with us. Later, when I showed the final print to them, the first thing they said was how wrong they were.”

With only a few weeks left in 1976 to complete the final shooting script, Waldo Salt fell seriously ill. Robert C. Jones, Mr. Ashby's film editor who had done some writing on “Bound for Glory,” was rushed in to rewrite the screenplay.

January 3, 1977. Principal photogra- sure of the construction, of where scene was going or how It would juxtapose with the next scene, I didn't feel comfortable doing it.”

Mr. Ashby's key task was to jettison much of the script's rhetoric. “What attracted me to the material was that if you showed 50 men in wheelchairs, you didn't have to say a lot of words about it,” he says. Mr. Gilbert, one of the ‘story's progenitors, admits that in the original concept the triangle was “more black and white, more polemical. The Marine was more unsympathetic and super macho, while the paraplegic was almost too angelic. They both transformed into more complex figures.”

Bruce Dern, who took on the role of the Marine after Mr. Voight vacated it, insisted the character required more understanding. “The skeleton of a very interesting human being was there. What about the guys who fought that damn war for whatever reason? They're not getting enough credit. I had to keep reminding everybody they needed that leg

`We started before we were ready,’ admits director Hal Ashby. ‘We had three or four scripts, an ending that didn't work and the first 30 or 40 pages weren't any good.’ phy began in a state of confusion; yet, everyone felt that if the camera didn't start cranking then, it never would. United Artists by now was extremely nervous about the project, the cost of which had risen to about $5 million, and with two other Vietnam movies—“Apocalypse Now” and “Dog Soldiers'—in their production hopper, a missed start date would have given them a legitimate excuse to back out.

“We started before we were ready,” admits Hal Ashby. “We had three or four scripts, an ending that didn't work and the first 30 or 40 pages weren't any good—it wandered off into a political thing where a bunch of guys took over the hospital. But the actors got more and more into their characters, and we rewrote as we went. We would improvise in rehearsal a lot, but since I wasn't of the triangle, that there were three points of view here.”

He also had to keep reminding the film makers that the ending hadn”t been resolved. As written by Mr. Salt, the Dern character would crack up, take hostages, dash from a police helicopter and get run over while firing at cars on freeway. Everyone hated it. “I would not have played the role if I hadn't known they intended to change it,” says Mr. Dern.

“I had the feeling I had already seed it somewhere before,” jokes Mr. Ashby. “Every Vietnam vet we showed the script to complained about that ending, of how they were always being depicted as totally crazy. ‘Give us a break,’ they were really saying.”

Instead, the director had the three characters confront each other in an intense scene that was first improvised by the actors one weekend.

The first question directed to returning disabled soldiers by their wives, by their girlfriends, even by their buddies invariably centered on their sexual capacity. Early in the planning, the film makers knew they had to confront this. Dr. Joshua Golden, director of the Sexual Dysfunction Clinic at 11.C.L.A., and his wife, Peggy, a sex therapist, supplied them with information regarding the sexual abilities of the disabled, as well as providing access to many patients and therapists. Mr. Voight, how‐. ever, received a more colorful education in these matters. “Five hundred guys were telling me how they did it. Every time I turned around somebody would say, ‘You know what I do?’ or, ‘Want to make it really terrific?’ “

Miss Fonda was extremely reluctant at first to play the love scene nude, fearful audiences would see not the character but Jane Fonda up there naked on the scene. “1 told her we would make Seem like the character, not her,” says Mr. Ashby. “The people who say, ‘I always knew that's what Jane Fonda was like’ you can do nothing about anyway. feel good about the scene.”

The set was cleared of all but cameraman and director. A body .double, stand‐in with similar skin tones, was used on a few shots as a courtesy to Miss Fonda. “We wanted to emphasize the romance, not the corporal aspects,” explains cinemetographer Haskell Wexler.

Four months of filming was followed by eight months of editing. Already attracting considerable controversy is Mr. Ashby's insistence on using a score of late sixties pop music, playing abstractly and unrelated to the cutting of the scenes, as though a radio were switched on throughout the movie. “My thought,” he says, “was that that music played a very important part during this period. Also, I was concerned that with a pictures this strong, a conventional score might make it soap‐operaish.”

While “Coming Home” had its official premiere last week in New York at Cinema 1, for Mr. Hellman his premiere came when he showed the film to the patients at Rancho Los Amigos. “Their reaction was marvelous. The recurrent theme of disabled people who've seen this movie is that it's the first time that someone suffering from a disability has been dealt with in films as a whole human being, with a complete repertory of feelings, emotions, visceral and sexual needs.”

“This war separated us all,” adds Mr. Voight. “But these guys experienced another kind of separation--from their injury. Their isolation is more extreme. Attention must be paid to these people.”

Coming Home

Where to Watch

Rod Hermansen (Jace Gallagher) Carl Bailey (Coach Jake Stone) Brenda Atchley (Liza) Alex Lee (Zach) Chelsea Linder (CJ Callagher) Nicole Holt (Nurse Jenkins) Leslie Merrill (Michelle) Savannah Atchley (Cory Tigers Softball Player) Joe Brooks Jr. (Cory Tiger Fan) Mayelene Brooks (Cory Tiger Fan)

Rod Hermansen

A father connects with his daughter through the sport of Softball.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home’ on Hallmark Mystery, A Solid Murder Procedural That’s Darker Than Most Hallmark Fare

Where to Stream:

• Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home
• movie reviews

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Sweet East’ on Hulu, a Goofy Poli-sci Satire Anchored by a Bemused Talia Ryder

Stream it or skip it: ‘the blue angels’ on amazon prime video, a glossy, upbeat glimpse into the stunning feats of elite navy fighter pilots, stream it or skip it: ‘conner o’malley: stand up solutions’ on youtube, a pitchman parody reveals his origin story for the villainy of a.i., stream it or skip it: ‘jeanne du barry’ on digital, a french-language johnny depp costume drama … but don’t call it a comeback.

Hallmark movies, even the mysteries, generally manage to project a sunny disposition thanks to their typically upbeat casts and low-stakes drama. Generally speaking, most of the content on the Hallmark Mystery channel fall into the “cozy murder” genre. But Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home is not really cozy or comforting, instead it’s just a solid murder procedural that doesn’t ever veer into fluffy, lighthearted territory. While there’s some light romance, this one is all about piecing together the clues to solve a small-town murder.

FAMILY PRACTICE MYSTERIES: COMING HOME : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Masked thieves break into a medical supply warehouse. Despite the building being fairly secure, these people have security codes and keys to let themselves in and they make off with some unidentified drugs.

The Gist: Rachel Hunt (Amanda Schull) is a former Army surgeon who has relocated with her twin teenagers Chloe and Matthew to her dad’s home in a small town after living in Germany. Her husband died while serving in Syria, and she’s got PTSD from serving in Afghanistan, and her kids are struggling to adjust to their move. Despite all of that trauma, they’re as positive and optimistic as they can be, and trying to keep moving forward with their lives.

Rachel now works at a local medical practice, and one of her patients, a man named Ross Alexander, is a 61-year-old man with no health issues. When Rachel tries to reach out to him to give him the results of an MRI one day, she grows concerned when he repeatedly doesn’t answer his phone. After multiple attempts to reach him, Rachel goes to his house where she finds him slumped over his desk, lifeless.

The medical examiner tells Rachel that without any signs of foul play, Ross likely died from a heart attack or stroke, but Rachel doesn’t believe it – this was a man who was the picture of health, and she sets out to investigate what could have happened to him.

Her dad puts her in touch with a local police detective, Jack Quinn (Brendan Penny) to look into the death, and they start compiling evidence that makes them suspicious that Ross’s death wasn’t natural after all. Rachel pushes the coroner for an autopsy despite pushback from the police and the victim’s family, and when they perform one, they find traces of a poison that induces paralysis and can cause death. With that proof, she and Jack realize they have a real murder on their hands. The question is, who had the motive?

They compile a list of possible suspects and chase leads, but as they dig deeper into the investigation (and eventually piece together how the burglary from that very first scene fits into the crime), not only do things become more dangerous, with one suspect getting murdered and Rachel herself becoming the target of the killer, but Rachel and Jack’s own relationship deepens. Because this is Hallmark, baby! What good is a murder mystery if there’s not some innocent flirtation thrown in?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Family Practice Mysteries is a straightforward procedural that’s like a cross between Law & Order and Crossing Jordan .

Our Take: Unlike most Hallmark fare, Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home is straightforward and serious, and that’s mostly thanks to Amanda Schull’s performance as Rachel. She’s playing a woman with PTSD and grief, not to mention the stress she has from parenting two teens who are struggling socially in school. But Schull doesn’t play Rachel as if everything is going to be okay all the time, which is a welcome change from this kind of fare; her character has conviction and a desire to help people, without being saccharine and overly optimistic.

The central mystery in the movie is just fine, the film keeps throwing in red herrings and clues that liven it up, but none of the characters are real wildcards, essentially we’re just here to watch Rachel (a doctor who should definitely not be given as much access to police files as she does) and Jack put the pieced of this puzzle together. They’re a winning combo, with good chemistry and rapport, and while they go on a couple of dates in the film, it will be interesting to see if this becomes a franchise and their relationship develops further. The film benefits from some helpful B-stories too, one that features Chloe and Matt struggling with the “popular” kids at school, and another about Rachel helping a military vet get back on his feet after a health crisis. They’re certainly not integral to the plot but they’re the elements of the movie that round out the edges of the murder mystery.

Parting Shot: Rachel surprises her two kids with a puppy, something they’ve been asking for ever since they moved back to the States. She thanks Jack, who is at her home for a celebratory “We solved a murder!” dinner, for helping her find a dog to adopt, and watches as her kids nuzzle the dog. “So cute!” she says. “I’m flattered,” Jack smiles, a callback to an earlier joke they shared. “I was talking about the puppy, but I think you knew that,” she responds flirtatiously.

Performance Worth Watching: Schull’s performance as Rachel is the heart of the movie. While everyone around her is believable, hers is the only character that’s got some real backstory and she makes Rachel’s specifics come to life.

Memorable Dialogue: “Mom, you should go to his work and ask about enemies, that’s what they do on SVU ,” Rachel’s daughter Chloe suggests when she learns her mother is investigating Ross’s death. Considering how much this movie gives off Law & Order vibes, this advice feels especially funny and rewarding because, Chloe, we were all thinking it.

Our Call: STREAM IT! Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home is a capable procedural drama that’s got likeable actors and solid chemistry. It’s got a formula that could easily translate to a series.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction .

• Crossing Jordan
• Hallmark Channel
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The Garfield Movie

After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist... Read all After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist. After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist.

• Mark Dindal
• Paul A. Kaplan
• Mark Torgove
• David Reynolds
• Chris Pratt
• Samuel L. Jackson
• Hannah Waddingham
• 46 User reviews
• 77 Critic reviews
• 30 Metascore

• Marge Malone

• Zapped Bird

• Rom-Com Woman

• Rom-Com Man
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Frank Welker , who's voiced Garfield since 2007, expressed his disappointment at not being asked to voice the character for this film.

Jon : Say when!

[as he starts grating parmesan cheese on lasagne; from teaser and official trailers]

Garfield : Never, Jon! Bury me in cheese!

• Crazy credits At the end of the credits, there is a three-strip comic with Garfield asking the audience why they are still here, then he tells them they are waiting for a sequel.
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: To Infinity and... (2021)

User reviews 46

• May 24, 2024
• When was The Garfield Movie released? Powered by Alexa
• May 24, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Official Site
• Garfield: Mèo Béo Siêu Quậy
• Columbia Pictures
• Alcon Entertainment
• Double Negative (DNEG)
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $31,875,000
• $24,775,000
• May 26, 2024
• $98,175,000

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 41 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos
• D-Cinema 96kHz 7.1
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• 12-Track Digital Sound

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From 'Atlas' to 'Dune 2,' here are 10 movies you need to stream right now

If you plan on reusing your "Dune: Part Two" popcorn bucket for your Memorial Day food festivities this long holiday weekend, then we know what you'll probably be streaming.

The super-cool sci-fi sequel is one of several new movies available on your favorite services: Netflix, Amazon's Prime Video, Max, Hulu and Disney+ have a bunch of good stuff to watch from your couch. There's original fare like a Jennifer Lopez sci-fi action extravaganza and documentaries on the Beach Boys and the Blue Angels, plus theatrical releases arriving on streaming, such as Michael Mann's Enzo Ferrari biopic and a Dakota Johnson superhero flick.

Here are 10 notable new movies you can stream right now that nicely pair with burgers and hot dogs:

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'American Fiction'

Amazon is finally streaming one of last year's best movies ! Better late than never to see Oscar nominee Jeffrey Wright at the absolute top of his game as a curmudgeonly academic who writes a book with stereotypically Black tropes as a joke and is shocked when it becomes a hit in this tremendously funny and thoughtful film.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Where to watch: Prime Video

The futuristic sci-fi thriller casts Jennifer Lopez as a counterterrorism expert out to take down a robot (Simu Liu) bent on wiping out most of mankind. What's better than rom-com J.Lo ? Action-hero J.Lo making friends with an AI and taking on villainous machines in mechanized armor.

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'Dune: Part Two'

Timothée Chalamet 's Paul Atreides gets to know love interest Chani (Zendaya) better and might even be a messiah in Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi sequel, which boasts plenty of staggering visuals, all the gigantic sandworms you’d ever want, and deep thematic exploration of power, colonialism and religion.

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'Madame Web'

In this clunker of a "Spider-Man" spinoff , Dakota Johnson at least exudes sassy scrappiness as a suddenly psychic paramedic who has to protect a trio of potential future crimefighters. Unfortunately, everybody in this thing gets stuck in its web of nonsense, which boasts bad dialogue and rampant B-movie silliness.

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How to watch 'Civil War' at home: When will the A24 film be streaming?

"What kind of American are you?" A24's latest blockbuster asks. If you've ever wondered what it would be like if California and Texas joined forces against the Land of the Free, you're about to find out in Civil War .

Writer and director Alex Garland 's mind has delivered twisted movies in the past like Men , Ex Machina , and Annihilation . So, when A24 's Civil War was announced, we knew the future of fictional America would be grim. Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura star as a pair of war journalists, while Nick Offerman plays the authoritarian president who has begun bombing civilians. Brace yourselves.

Here's everything you need to know about how to watch the harrowing Civil War from the comfort of your home.

What is Civil War about?

Civil War is a dystopian thriller set in a near-future America engulfed in a second — you guessed it — Civil War. It's also a road trip movie that follows four journalists — photographers Lee and Jessie (Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny), and reporters Joel and Sammy (Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson) — making the audacious journey from New York City to the White House in hopes of interviewing the president (Nick Offerman) before the fall of the Capitol. Typically only a few hours on I-95, devastation on the roads means they're forced to navigate through small towns and dangerous pockets of America.

"Each stop functions as a vignette in which Garland exposes a corner of American wrath, wrong-headed self-righteousness, or apathy. And like with Children of Men, where the quest is born from ideology — in this case, Lee's dedication to journalism — it becomes achingly personal. Seeing a bit of herself in Jessie, Lee takes risks to protect the young woman, even as she laments that their work demands putting themselves in harm's way," Mashable Film Editor Kristy Puchko writes in her review of the film.

Is Civil War worth watching?

Currently still in theaters, Civil War has earned $112.7 million at the worldwide box office against a $50 million production budget. It's definitely lived up to expectations and then some, earning more worldwide than recent high-profile flicks like Cocaine Bear , Argylle , and The Creator and becoming A24's second-biggest hit at the theaters (after Everything Everywhere All at Once ). Of course, box office success doesn't mean much unless the audiences like the film. Fortunately, reviews are largely positive for the dystopian Garland flick. On Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an 82 percent critic rating and a 71 percent audience rating.

Mashable's review critiqued the film's overall lack of focus, but still refers to the climax in D.C. as "sprawling and spectacular."

Read our full review of Civil War .

How to watch Civil War at home

About a month and a half after its theatrical debut, Civil War is officially available to watch at home via video-on-demand sites like Prime Video and Fandango at Home (Vudu). You can purchase the film for your digital collection or rent it for 30 days. Just remember once you start watching a rental, you'll have just 48 hours to finish before you lose access.

As of May 24, you can purchase and rent the film at the following retailers:

• Prime Video — buy for $24.99, rent for $19.99
• Apple TV — buy for $24.99, rent for $19.99
• Fandango at Home (Vudu) — buy for $24.99, rent for $19.99
• YouTube — buy for $24.99, rent for $19.99

Is Civil War streaming?

If you'd rather wait for Civil War to start streaming, you can prepare by signing up for a Max subscription. While it hasn't officially been announced yet, A24 has a licensing deal with Max. So, that pretty much seals the deal that Civil War will make its streaming debut on the platform. There's no official streaming date yet, but we'll keep you updated when the date is announced. Until then, check out the following Max streaming deals. Max subscriptions start at $9.99 per month, but there are some ways you can save some money on your plan.

Best Max streaming deals to watch Civil War

Best max streaming deal for most people: save 17% on max with ads annual subscription.

Max subscriptions start at $9.99 per month if you don't mind watching with ads. You can simply sign up for a single month (once Civil War is released), then cancel before you're charged for another. Or, if you're in it for the long haul, we recommend the yearly subscription instead. An annual plan with ads goes for $99.99 per year, which breaks down to just $8.33 per month. That's 17% (or $1.66) per month in savings. With a year-long subscription, you can watch many other A24 films beyond Civil War .

Best Max deal with no ads: Save 22% on a Max Ad-Free annual subscription

Rather not have ads interrupting your movie-watching experience? You have the Max Ad-Free and Max Ultimate tiers to choose from. The Ad-Free tier is $15.99 per month, while the Ultimate tier is $19.99 per month. If you opt for a yearly plan instead, though, it will only cost you $149.99 per year (which breaks down to $12.49 per month) or $199.99 per year (which breaks down to $16.67 per month). That's a total savings of 22% on the Ad-Free yearly plan or 17% on the Ultimate plan.

Note: While both tiers offer an ad-free viewing experience, the Ultimate tier takes things a step further with 4K Ultra HD video quality and Dolby Atmos immersive audio.

Best Max deal for Cricket customers: Free Max with ads for customers on the $60/month unlimited plan

If you've never considered Cricket as your wireless provider, this deal might make you change your mind. Cricket Wireless customers on the $60 per month unlimited plan get Max with ads for free as long as their account remains in good standing. That's a $99.99 per year value. Just head over to the Max app or navigate to Max.com on a browser, choose Cricket as your provider, and use your Cricket credentials to log in. Then you'll be able to watch Civil War and other A24 films for no extra cost. Check out the terms and conditions on Cricket's website to learn more.

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When is ‘furiosa: a mad max saga’ coming to streaming on max.

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is now in theaters.

The anticipated Mad Max prequel is finally in theaters. If you want to watch Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga from home, discover when the post-apocalyptic action film will arrive on Max and digital platforms below .

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the fifth installment in the long-running Mad Max franchise and serves as a spinoff and prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). The film focuses on the origins and backstory of Imperator Furiosa, originally portrayed by Charlize Theron. Anya Taylor-Joy and Alyla Browne star as younger versions of Furiosa, alongside Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke. Franchise creator George Miller returned to helm the recent film.

The prequel takes viewers 15 to 20 years before the events of Fury Road . “Snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers, young Furiosa falls into the hands of a great biker horde led by the warlord Dementus,” the official logline reads. “Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel, presided over by the Immortan Joe. As the two tyrants fight for dominance, Furiosa soon finds herself in a nonstop battle to make her way home.”

Miller, who created the franchise in 1979 , told the LA Times in May that the universe featured in Furiosa is “a world in extremis, no question, where the conflicts are very elemental.”

“We call it the inverted world. By and large the world we live in — at least on the surface — works fairly smoothly,” the Australian filmmaker continued. “For instance, every time a big jet lands after flying over a city it’s the result of invisible cooperation, almost to the point of altruism, that those who live below the airplane’s flight pattern take completely for granted. In the inverted world, people behave in dark ways. One human’s regard for another is the exception and gestures of positive regard are the rare thing — a little ray of light.”

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Iphone 16 pro max key new upgrades leaked in latest report, nyt strands 84 hints spangram and answers for sunday may 26th, how to watch furiosa: a mad max saga.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga premiered in theaters in the U.S. on Friday, May 24, 2024. Currently, the only way to watch Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in the movie theaters. Check your local cinemas for specific showtimes.

When Is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Coming to Streaming?

Warner Bros. has yet to announce when Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will be available to stream on Max. Typically, the studio will wait between 60 and 90 days after the theatrical premiere to release the film on its streaming platform, which brings viewers to sometime in July or August.

For comparison, Wonka debuted in theaters on December 15, 2023, and arrived on Max almost three months later on March 8, 2024. Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom had a shorter timeline, debuting on Max 67 days after its December premiere. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire , which premiered on March 29, has yet to be released on Max.

You don’t have to wait for Furiosa to arrive on Max to watch the movie at home. Furiosa will be available to purchase and rent sooner on digital VOD sites like Amazon Prime Video and YouTube TV, usually around 45 days after its theatrical release. With this in mind, the earliest Furiosa could arrive on digital is around July 8, 2024.

Stay tuned to learn exactly when Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will be on Max and digital.

Watch the trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga below.

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Movies | ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ review: Anya…

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Movies | ‘furiosa: a mad max saga’ review: anya taylor-joy tastes hot asphalt and cold, cold revenge.

Forty-six years of rough road later, here we are at the fifth “Mad Max” movie. Now 79, Miller remains an action fantasist of the highest order and has become the spiritual if very-much-alive cousin of the eulogized character in his first smash hit. (Its budget was $350,000, roughly $1.5 million in 2024 dollars.) “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is a prequel to 2015’s lavishly nutty “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and is the work of a director full of living, albeit guided by an ever-darker vision of humankind barreling toward the cliff. He has run the franchise on it.

I’ll try to explain why I’m all over the highway on “Furiosa,” even as I’m recommending it. The best of it is spectacular, tapping into so many different ways to create and assemble images in contemporary big-budget filmmaking, you can barely keep track.

The story belongs to Furiosa, who we meet as a young girl played by Alyla Browne. In the barely human patriarchies of this parched post-apocalypse desert land, only the Vuvalini, aka the Tribe of Many Mothers, living in the Edenic paradise known as the Green Place, point to a better way.

The optimism lasts about 45 seconds in movie terms. Right off, Furiosa is abducted by the snarling, drooling Biker Horde, ruled by Dr. Dementus. This is the major new character; he’s played by Chris Hemsworth, who has most of the screenplay’s verbiage for better or worse. Visually, the character borrows Charlton Heston’s nose, Heston’s “Ben-Hur” chariot (pulled here by three tricked-up motorcycles; the vehicles in the “Mad Max” universe remain unbeatably weird and fantastically convincing), and Heston’s “Ten Commandments” beard.

“Furiosa” is actually pretty light on narrative, as written by director Miller and “Fury Road” co-writer Nick Lathouris. The crafty survival machine of the title meets a series of grueling, generally sadistic circumstances. Both Dementus, a nattering, twisted father figure of a psycho, and his sometime enemy, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, taking over for the late Hugh Keays-Byrne) have uses for Furiosa. She knows the location of the Green Place, though the miseries she has survived, painfully, and the rage in her heart, renders her mute for years. Even as a young adult, once Anya Taylor-Joy takes over the role an hour into the picture, Furiosa has little use for words.

There’s world-building aplenty. One fiefdom, The Citadel, resembles a sand-swept Middle-earth, or the Tower of Babel’s ambitious new condo development. Dementus cuts a deal with his enemy and gains control of nearby Gastown. The realms of “Fury Road” and now “Furiosa,” like their “Mad Max” franchise predecessors, run on petroleum (scarce), water (scarcer) and blood (spilling constantly, corpses and vivisected limbs strewn all over the desert).

As gratifyingly different as the “Mad Max” movies have been, at heart Miller is making ever-more-grandiose biker movies, but with more than bikes. “Furiosa” lives and breathes righteous retribution, setting her unblinking sights on the pig-men who killed her mother, and who enslave women as harem chattel.

The new film, rather portentously divided into solemn-sounding chapters, covers many years, which marks a change from previous “Mad Max” sagas. More pertinent to the overall viewing experience (mine, at least), “Furiosa” is the grimmest and most deliberately punishing of Miller’s visions. The occasional stabs at black comedy feel a little off. In this awful if fabulously designed near-future, as Dementus’ resident History Man (George Shevtsov, a wizened Shakespearean fool) asks in voiceover, “how must we brave the cruelties?” The movie provides the two hour, 28 minute answer.

The internal tensions within “Furiosa” fill the screen, even when they can’t resolve their contradictory natures. Miller’s not kidding around. He doesn’t like how humankind mistreats its home or degrades the culture with “ridiculous perversions and witty mutilations.” That phrase is actually heard in voiceover here; it’s Miller, and the franchise, having a little fun with the paradox at the center of the “Mad Max” universe. Cheap thrills, beautifully executed, plus some unsettling food for thought: That’s the idea. Beautifully executed cheap thrills without the “unsettling” part are rare enough.

I’ll see “Furiosa” again for many reasons, none purer or more pleasurable than the peak action vignette, a roughly 15-minute chase involving a tanker truck (aka the War Rig), steroidal dune buggies, motorcycles and para-sailing warriors. It’s a wonder, exceeding even the best of “Fury Road.” To their huge credit, Miller and editors Eliot Knapman and Margaret Sixel keep the longer takes of speeding warriors and their flame-throwing weapons of doom flowing, lucidly, excitingly. Yes, there’s considerably more digital futzing going on in “Furiosa,” compared to “Fury Road” (which was hardly all-analog). But Miller’s passionate artifice and eye for detail — including dreamy, digitally rendered sights such as Dementus’s biker army, swarming as one across the desert — are as good as it gets in modern visual effects.

Is the movie fun? Well, Furiosa’s story doesn’t really welcome that word. It’s gripping, even when it’s a bit of a trudge. Miller’s a visual genius. And a pile-driver. He’s also an adult, with a mature master filmmaker’s sensibility and serious intentions to go with his eternal-adolescent love of speed and noise. Budget estimates for Miller’s latest run between $168 million and $233 million, which is a tad more than the $350,000 “Mad Max” had going for it. But some things do not change. Even amid new depths of misery, “Furiosa” still delivers the clean, electrifying, inches-above-asphalt camera perspectives that made the Cinemascope-shot “Mad Max” so arresting nearly two generations ago.

Even if they’re not their own best screenwriters, some directors just know what they’re doing.

“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” — 3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for sequences of strong violence, and grisly images)

Running time: 2:28

How to watch: Premieres in theaters May 23

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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