Home Free All (1983)

This well-wrought, perceptive comedy drama about the differing adjustments of three Vietnam vets to life in the Big City focuses on Barry Simon (Allan Nicholls), whose involvement in radical politics just after he came back from Southeast Asia slowly gave way to the pressures of more ordinary life, and so he is now making a living as a writer in New York. Miserable after his girlfriend walks out on him, Barry looks up another Vietnam vet, Al (Roland Caccavo), who is a model of the standard suburban life with one wife and 1.2 children, but Al himself has not adjusted to his mundane existence, and out of that dissatisfaction he moves in with Barry for awhile. The two buddies hang out together, doing guy stuff like playing handball and chasing women -- enough to show Al that a bachelor life is not everything it's cracked up to be and to show Barry that a roommate who treats him like a servant (read: wife) is not highly desirable. Then Marvin (Lorry Goldman), the third vet in this trio, comes menacingly into the picture when Barry gets some work from him -- even though Marvin is clearly a Jewish Mafia power-broker who eventually lets Barry off the hook when the writer changes his mind about his job assignment. As Barry and Al continue learning from their choices, the two make new decisions about where they want to be in life, indicating that the psychological scars of the war may have finally healed over. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi