Going Home

When Jimmy Graham (Jan Michael Viencent) was six years old he witnessed the aftermath of his father, Harry Graham (Robert Mitchum), murdering his mother. He was forced to testify against his dad, and after his conviction he was passed around between foster homes and boys' schools. Thirteen years later, and Jimmy Graham is a kid with a mighty case of PTSD, a chip on his shoulder, and a case of smoldering anger against his dad.

When Jimmy makes one of his infrequent trips to the prison, he discovers that dad was paroled months ago and didn't bother to get in touch with him and tell him he is out. He looks dad up and sees dad is getting on with his life - living in a trailer park, working as a mechanic, he even has a steady girl. Not that Harry seems to know what to do with their relationship. He alternately acts friendly towards his son and then out of the blue rejects him. At least, though, we have some of that Mitchum laconic coolness on display where I get some idea of where he is coming from.

Jimmy, however, has as close to a resting b**ch face that a man can have, and wanders around mute and behaving largely in a passive aggressive fashion. Sometimes he acts like he wants to get close to dad, other times he is complaining to the parole board about the fact that Harry is even out, another time he scratches a BEWARE OF HARRY GRAHAM message on the men's room wall. Towards the end, however, Jimmy does a deed so foul that no amount of childhood trauma can excuse it. At that point I just wanted Mitchum to show up and go all Cape Fear on this unlikable person.

The editing is not great either. Jimmy seems to have no life at all when he decides to decamp and go meddle in dad's life. Yet at the end of the film he shows up at some house of ill repute where people see him and say "Quitters are not welcome!". Jimmy calls his dad and tells him where he is, and dad says emphatically "I told you never to go back to that house!" and feels so strongly about it he has to go drive over and get him. What is this house? Until these scenes it has not been shown and I have no idea what it is doing in this film.

The 3 stars are for Mitchum, who is a presence even in a bad film with a bad script and bad editing.

After Ryan's Daughter Robert Mitchum retired from the screen and found he was bored with retirement and with writers sending him scripts as they always do, he picked Going Home as a comeback vehicle. I don't think Mitchum was gone even a year so it wasn't like he was missed.

What could have been a classic settles into the ordinary as Mitchum plays a father just released on parole from prison. What he did back in the day was kill his wife in a drunken rage. It was a manslaughter count that he would have plead guilty to. But also his young son witnessed his father do the deed.

The kid grows up to be Jan-Michael Vincent who started his career playing sensitive youths. Vincent of course is barely concealing his anger and he takes it out on Mitchum in a not too subtle way.

With that murderous act creating a gulf between them there was no hope of reconciliation and both would have been better off to have left sleeping dogs lie.

The third person in the mix here is Brenda Vaccaro who was coming off a great performance in Midnight Cowboy. She plays Mitchum's girlfriend and her in the picture isn't guaranteeing anything but sexual tension all around.

Going Home is an interesting film, but just doesn't quite get its message across. All these people had some great work ahead, Mitchum and Vincent would be together in The Winds Of War which is far superior to Going Home and they would be father and son again.

"Going Home" explores a potentially interesting premise: a child who witnessed his mother's murder at the hands of his father grows up and confronts his parolee father. Where this movie fails is in its execution, which becomes progressively more confused and convoluted often leaving the viewer unsure as to where a scene is actually taking place. Frustratingly, most of the lead characters, especially Jimmy, come across as erratic. Their behavior at times seems entirely unrealistic and whatever motivations they might have are never really explored.

About the only thing that saves this movie from a lower rating is Mitchum's characteristically strong performance considering the confused story and direction he has to contend with.

It was made in seventies, early seventies, and that explains the way it was directed, played and written. Two decades later, it would have been different. Anyway, that did not interfere with the pleasure I had to spend time watching it. Robert Mitchum gives the portrait of an ambivalent character, a bit disturbing, in the father character, and not the ordinary father, not the good family man whom you could expect in a normal family. He killed his wife and years later his grown up son goes to find his father and get some explanation, talk to him...That's precisely at this point that the story comes interesting, gripping. An underrated film, I guess.

If someone says they have had the perfect life they are either lying or are a single child being raised by a single parent, and even then maybe they just have not lived long enough. There are three fine perfomances on display by a young Jan-Michael Vincent, Brenda Vaccaro and of course Robert Mitchum.

This is a story only a few families may be able relate to in relation to a murder of one parent by another parent, and in this case it is about Robert Mitchum while in a drunken stupor murdering his own wife as his young son around seven (7) years of age is left parentless after his father is imprisoned. Eventually Mitchu is released from prison and he has a new girlfriend (Vaccaro) to which they are trying to re-build their lives when unexpectedly Mitchum's now teenage son (Jan-Michael Vincent) suddenly appears at their door.

Neither father, son, nor Brenda Vaccaro who is Mitchum's live-in trailer girlfriend know how to adapt to being a family since Mitchum has spent the last decade or so in prison while his young son grew up in foster homes. It is not an easy watch as stuff happens in real life that is unpleasant to have to hear, let alone watch. But families can overcome great difficulties if they can learn to live with their pasts and become better people. This is the story of father Harry K. Graham (Robert Mitchum), estranged son Jimmy Graham (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Harry's live in girlfriend Jenny Benson (Brenda Vaccaro) who have to try and find a way to not only survive but to live as a family.

A 6/10 rating