Film

Welcome Home (1989)

Director: Franklin J Schaffer

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Seventeen years after being declared missing in action in Cambodia, pilot Jake Robbins (Kristofferson) turns up in his American home town, where he is reunited with his wife Sarah (now happily remarried) and teenage son. Jake, it appears, has a new wife and kids in Cambodia, where he would have stayed had he not been wounded, hospitalised, and duly identified by the military. His reappearence causes Sarah (Williams) to reassess her marriage to Woody (Waterston), and shatters son Tyler's glorified image of his heroic father. Yes, it's big family crisis time, with little to commend it other than Waterston, who anchors the film in some form of credible behaviour while all around is mushy, tear-jerking melodrama. As the last drop of emotional manipulation is squeezed from the turmoil (accompanied throughout by Willie Nelson's nasal whining), the movie attempts to transform itself into a thriller about government secrecy and gung-ho rescue operations, but by then who cares?

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