Pretty well every complication you could imagine about a 'missing' serviceman returning home after 17 years in Vietnam and Cambodia is tossed into this script. Kris Kristofferson has every reason to look troubled as he's first parted from his Cambodian wife and child (later learning she's died), then in hot water with the US government and finally learns that his wife at home gave birth to his son before re-marrying. Of course he has to see them, and of course everything isn't explained to anyone before they meet the man returned from the dead. Rather than adding to the drama, this ploy makes it slow and ponderous. But the sheer nature of the story occasionally helps director Franklin Schaffner achieve affecting moments from what was his last film. Decent performances from JoBeth Williams (as the wife) and Sam Waterston (the new husband), but Kristofferson and Brian Keith (as his father) tend to do little but look anguished, and teenager Thomas Wilson Brown, quite apart from not being very good, is a genetically unlikely result of Kristofferson and Williams' union.


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