Labor Day

So, Labor Day. A film following the exploits of Ed Milliband as he goes about his daily grind? Or a snapshot of a day in the life of a hospitals maternity ward? Ah, no. This is the US kind of labor, though there is little hard graft on show in Jason Reitman’s drama unless you find cooking peach pies particularly taxing. Based on Joyce Maynard’s novel of the same name, we follow single mum Adele (Kate Winslet), who when out on a shopping trip with her son is accosted by a injured stranger (Josh Brolin) and forced to take him back to her house. Alice and rugrat soon discover that their new guest, Frank, is in fact an escaped convict. From the poster you can guess the rest. Yep, Frank becomes a father figure to the boy and Adele and Frank fall for each other. It’s all fairly straight forward, though there are a couple of mysteries that the script keeps well hidden in the form of what crime Frank was actually convicted of (shown in flashback with Tom Lipinski bearing an incredible resemblance to a young Brolin) and as the neighbours and townsfolk grow ever more suspicious of Adele and Franks actions you genuinely don’t know what the final outcome for them will be. Reitman is one of the more reliable directors around, but his wont of mixing up his genres from film to film fails him here as there isn’t enough going on to overlook the implausibility of the script. It’s hinted that Alice suffers from depression, but its never addressed to the point that intimates she’s so lonely that she would allow a threat like Frank into her life. Plus despite being set in 1987 the look and feel is a lot more contemporary than that. The film shares its DNA with Clint Eastwood's vastly superior A Perfect World, so if you’ve seen that you don’t need to bother with this. Probably best filed under: “If you like this sort of thing….”. Rating: 6/10.