Review of Welcome Home

The Vietnam War MIA issue was always a thorny one, and in the years following the end of that savagely divisive conflict, when negotiations with Vietnam over normalization of relations would have made it embarrassing for our government to admit we had been involved in ostensibly neutral countries such as Cambodia, you have to wonder if there was an awareness of MIAs whose survival was known, but who were simply and conveniently forgotten. This is the dilemma of Jake Robbins (Kris Kristofferson), a fighter pilot shot down in Cambodia, captured and held in one of the infamous "cages", who manages to escape, but is wounded and would probably have perished in the jungle had he not been rescued by a young woman. Jake, believing that he will never be able to find a way to get home, falls in love with his rescuer and has two children with her. Then, years later, sick and hallucinating, he is carried by the wife and her people to receive medical assistance in Thailand, where he falls into the custody of the U. S. military and awakens from a near-comatose condition to find that he has been separated from his family and is a virtual prisoner because of the potential embarrassment to the government of having it get out that there may have been MIAs, known to be alive, who were simply abandoned by their government. The impact of Jake's return upon his American family -- including the father (Brian Keith) who is still mourning his son, the former wife (JoBeth Williams), who as a widow found solace in the arms of another fine man (Sam Waterston), and the son, that Jake didn't know he had, who is so threatened by the return of a man who was believed by him to be a dead hero, that he starts going off his adolescent rails. The acting by Kristofferson and Sam Waterston -- two enormously underrated actors -- is superb. Each represents a threat to the other, yet they never miss a beat in consideration for each other's feelings in this mess they both find themselves trapped in. JoBeth Williams turns in a fine performance as well as the wife who never really stopped loving her husband when he was safely dead, yet is troubled that the return of the real man makes her confused and sad. Brian Keith is always good, and as the father who was so proud when is son went off to fight until the Air Force sent him a flag-draped box with his son's remains, he absorbs the tragic lesson that Wwar is much more glorious in the abstract than in the concrete and real. That is why the Vietnam Memorial, that staggering wall of name after name, is so incredible. It does not glorify our martial past. On the contrary, it almost begs the visitor, who stands there stunned, to question whether it was worth it. All of these young men and women -- surely they did their duty, but did their government send them off to die in vain? And if not, then isn't the sacrifice of each one so compelling that we should have been willing to move heaven and earth to absolutely account for everyone who served? Those are the uncomfortable questions this film forces you to confront. The fact that the film is not up there with some of the best of the genre in garnering critical plaudits which might have made it a great success, instead of an underappreciated jewel, suggests that we prefer to preserve our myths about war. If I were to offer some critical comments, I would point out that (1) the performance of the actor who plays the teenage son is underwhelming, (2) the availability of a Senator who can help Jake resolve his problem of dealing with the threat of a court-martial if he doesn't toe the line in keeping quiet is just a little too convenient to be realistic, and finally, (3) the ending is spoiled by having one of the heroines of the film -- the Cambodian wife, who saves Jake not just once, but twice -- die. If anyone deserves to be part of a satisfying ending, she does. Finally, in response to a query about the theme song by another reviewer, the song is called "Welcome Home", written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and it is sung by Willie Nelson. I do not believe there was ever a soundtrack released. As for the review by the reviewer who wrote such a nasty and personal attack on actor Kristofferson ("deathmasklike craggy features"?), next time try to write something a potential viewer of a film might actually find helpful, instead of an exercise of pure spleen.