In 1968 California, Sally, Jane Fonda a loyal and conservative military wife, is married to Bob Hyde, Bruce Dern a captain in the United States Marine Corps who stands on the brink of deployment to Vietnam. Bob views the assignment mainly as a chance for career advancement, while Sally initially dreads being left alone. Yet as time passes, she begins to feel a sense of freedom she hadn’t anticipated. Forced to move off the base, she takes a beachside apartment, buys a sports car, and finds herself with plenty of quiet time to fill. With nothing else to do, she starts volunteering at a local Veterans Administration hospital, drawn in part by her bohemian friend Vi Munson, Penelope Milford whose brother Bill has returned from Vietnam with deep emotional wounds and now resides at the VA hospital.
At the hospital, Sally meets Luke Martin, Jon Voight, a former high school classmate who also went to Vietnam and came back damaged. Luke is a paraplegic, carrying pain, anger, and disillusionment with the war. He begins as a bitter, impulsive young man, but as Sally enters his life, a fragile bond forms between them. Luke leaves the hospital gradually, buoyed by mobility from his new wheelchair, and starts to rebuild his life. His relationship with Sally grows stronger, and she undergoes her own transformation; their days are filled with beach outings, laughter, and an aching tenderness as they fall in love. Meanwhile, Bill’s trauma drives a different, darker path: overwhelmed by his experiences, he commits suicide by injecting air into his veins, a tragedy that casts a shadow over Sally and Luke’s burgeoning romance. In response to Bill’s death, Luke chains himself to the gates of a local recruitment center in a desperate attempt to deter others from enlisting.
Sally and Luke share an intimate moment, confronting Luke’s handicap, and Sally experiences her first orgasm. Yet the future remains uncertain, and both understand that their affair cannot endure once Bob returns. Bob does come home sooner than expected, claiming he had wounded himself in the leg, while also suffering from post-traumatic stress from combat. He uncovers Sally’s affair after Army Intelligence has been spying on Luke since the gate incident, and Sally and Luke decide that Sally should try to repair her marriage.
The confrontation reaches a breaking point when Bob, overwhelmed, confronts the lovers with a loaded rifle but ultimately refrains from violence. He folds his neatly pressed Marine dress uniform on the beach, removes his wedding ring, and walks into the ocean to end his life. The film closes on a solemn note, tracing the ripple effects of love, duty, and trauma through a family torn by war and the moral ambiguity of loyalties rebuilt and surrendered.
