Coming Home
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: September 9, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Boston GlobePeter KeoughOct 1, 2015
After a period of creative drought, Zhang’s homecoming is a cause for celebration. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonSep 17, 2015
I’m not sure if there’s room in the new Chinese film world, which like American cinemas is now dominated by big-budget special effects films, for another series of Gong-Zhang films. But they should forge ahead. They’ve recaptured the magic. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedSep 8, 2015
Elegant and wrenching, Coming Home is a quiet, haunting masterpiece. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatySep 2, 2015
Yimou’s lovely import is the kind of lump-in-your-throat drama they don’t make much anymore, at least in Hollywood. Watching Coming Home you’ll wonder why that is — and who we can write a letter to to fix it. Read full review
90
NPRBob MondelloSep 10, 2015
China's Cultural Revolution was a period of political turmoil, launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, a dark decade that many in Chinese society would prefer to forget. So it says something that Zhang Yimou's new drama Coming Home, which is set during those years, has been a big success in China. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleSep 8, 2015
Zhang and his sterling actors have made something fairly unforgettable about the tragedy of forgetting. Read full review
90
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekSep 8, 2015
Coming Home obviously has historical and political significance for Chinese who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and for families that were torn apart by it. But Zhang tells this particular story in a deeply personal way — the time and place of its setting have a specific meaning, but its emotional contours spread out into something bigger. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiSep 10, 2015
What this film may lack in terms of visual flamboyance, it more than makes up for in telling its simple and direct story with a raw, emotional power that doesn't need lavish spectacle in order to get its point across. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChuck BowenSep 7, 2015
Coming Home is a film in which everyone's dreams are irrevocably broken, the pieces too small to grasp, let alone pick up. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanOct 6, 2015
Historical resonances aside, Coming Home functions well as an impeccably crafted, compellingly acted tale. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 11, 2015
Coming Home works best on a more lived-in, emotional level. It presents a trajectory not uncommon in Zhang's films: a journey from howling passion to somber, almost tragic acceptance. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 8, 2015
There is terrible pain here, and the main interest of the film is in how the characters respond to it and what their response says about China’s understanding of its recent history. Read full review
80
VarietyMaggie LeeMay 24, 2014
Heartbreaking in its depiction of ordinary lives affected by political upheaval, this ode to the fundamental values that survive even under such dire circumstances has an epic gravity that recalls another great historical romance, “Doctor Zhivago.” Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovSep 30, 2015
Set against the gray backdrop of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, this is old-school melodrama writ big from a director who’s probably better known to mainstream American audiences as the man behind the spectacular Wushu action epics Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanOct 29, 2015
The slender story seems overextended at times, with Lu finding new ways each week to insinuate himself into Yu’s life. Zhang doesn’t make a point once if he can make it twice, and the characters don’t change much over the middle hour. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorOct 2, 2015
In the end, the family drama rolls on as the political metaphor wears thin so that the second half of the film is less striking and less interesting than the first. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartSep 10, 2015
In Zhang’s capable hands, their love story — in which Yanshi masquerades as various workmen in order to see his wife and attempt to jog her memory — is elegantly touching, as is the slow repair of the relationship between father and daughter. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloSep 8, 2015
It’s a less pointed and implicitly feminist work than such classics as "Raise The Red Lantern" and "The Story Of Qiu Ju" —one could even call it a shameless weepie. Still, it’s a welcome throwback to one of the most emotionally wrenching actor-director partnerships in film history. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 24, 2014
While tears will be jerked, heartstrings plucked and throats enlumpened, it has to go down as a disappointment in the director’s catalogue. Read full review
60
The GuardianXan BrooksMay 24, 2014
A sweet yet suspect romantic drama. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterElizabeth KerrMay 24, 2014
Coming Home sinks into a conventional tragic romance rut that not even engaging performances by Gong and Chen can save. Read full review
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