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At times Coming Home is too ambitious for its own good. The screenplay not only spins the tale of a tragic love triangle, it also attempts to chronicle Sally's growing political radicalization and her feminist-styled friendship with another woman on base (Penelope Milford). In the film's second half, the narrative extravagance takes its toll. Contrived plot devices, including the suicide of a minor character and the sudden intrusion of malevolent FBI agents, spring up to jerk Coming Home toward its conclusion.
Once the finale does arrive, it turns out to be a cheat. The story's relationships are not satisfactorily resolved, and we are left with a melodramatic denouement that recalls, of all movies, the Judy Garland version of A Star Is Born. It is quite a comedown from Coming Home's superb opening sequence, in which maimed veterans heatedly debate the war over a game of pool.
There are also occasions when Ashby reaches for cheap ironies. Luke's passionate lovemaking is glibly contrasted to the mechanical bedroom manner of Sally's husband. The vintage rock songs on the sound track, while important to the film's sense of period, are sometimes used to comment upon the action too literally.
Yet none of these flaws rob Coming Home of its considerable bite. Whenever the movie starts to lose its way, Ashby stages a powerful scene to bring the war back home. In one of them, Sally meets her husband in a sad Hong Kong hotel room while he is on leave from the front.
"My men were chopping [the Viet Cong's] heads off," Dern announces, almost matter-of-factly, "and that's what they were into." In another, Luke speaks before an assembly of high school boys, counseling them to avoid the draft. "There was a lot of shit over there I find f— ing hard to live with," Luke tells the kids, as his voice starts to crack. "But I don't feel sorry for myself. I'm just saying that there's a choice to be made." At such moments Coming Home, like Shampoo before it, reminds us of the choices everybody made during those harrowing war years — and of the price the nation paid thereafter.
— Frank Rich