LABOR DAY (2013)

Genre: Drama
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gattlin Griffith, James Van Der Beek, Alexie Gilmore, Clark Gregg, Lucas Hedges, Brooke Smith, Gattlin Griffith, Tom Lipinski, Maika Monroe, Brighid Fleming, Micah Fowler, Tobey Maguire
RunTime: 1 hr 52 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Sexual Scene)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: http://www.labordaymovie.com/index_splash.php

Opening Day: 13 March 2014

Synopsis: “Labor Day” centers on 13-year-old Henry Wheeler, who struggles to be the man of his house and care for his reclusive mother Adele while confronting all the pangs of adolescence. On a back-to-school shopping trip, Henry and his mother encounter Frank Chambers, a man both intimidating and clearly in need of help, who convinces them to take him into their home and later is revealed to be an escaped convict. The events of this long Labor Day weekend will shape them for the rest of their lives.  

Movie Review:

Since bursting out of his father’s shadow eight years ago with the subversive dramedy ‘Thank You for Smoking’, Jason Reitman has been cementing his reputation as a ‘wunderkind’ in Hollywood with critically acclaimed films like ‘Juno’,  ‘Up in the Air’ and ‘Young Adult’. It’s a little surprising therefore that Reitman has, for his fifth feature, decided instead to go all Nicholas Sparks on his fans, and despite not being based on a novel by the writer, his adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s novel barely rises above the stuff of a sappy romance – and that is even with an A-list cast including Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin.

The title refers to the weekend over which the events of Reitman’s adaptation unfold, which trades the contemporary vibe of his earlier movies for a small New Hampshire town circa 1987. It is in that fictitious town of Holton Mills where 13-year-old Henry (Gattlin Griffith) and his mother (Winslet) meets the escaped convict Frank (Josh Brolin) in the local Pricemart department store. There is blood on his scalp and he walks with a limp, but Frank manages to convince the mother-and-son pair to take him in.

Turns out that Frank is in fact a convicted murderer who escaped from hospital after an appendectomy, but hey this isn’t the kind of movie where he turns psychotic on them. Instead, Frank reveals himself to have a heart of gold, and over that titular weekend develops a bond with both Adele and Henry. He teaches Henry how to throw a baseball. He changes the oil in Adele’s station wagon. He cooks chili and makes them breakfast. But most of all, he makes a damn hell of a peach pie, so no matter the fact that they are actually his hostages, it isn’t any surprise that both quickly take to him as the father figure that they never had in the house.

But it goes deeper than that. Frank and Adele are both nursing their own emotional wounds from their previous relationships. Frank’s conviction we learn arose from a cheating wife; while Adele is in chronic depression after suffering numerous miscarriages and never quite recovering from a divorce with Henry’s father Gerald (Clark Gregg), so Henry has since assumed the role of caretaker for his mother. “I came to save you,” declares Frank, and if you are the sort who thinks you will respond with tremulous yearning gazes (as Adele does), then you’ll find ‘Labor Day’ is just the movie for you.

Otherwise, you will quite likely find this mush quite ingratiating, especially how it ultimately strains logic at almost every juncture. At no point in the movie does Reitman bother to convince us that Frank is in the least bit dangerous; instead, through overlit flashback sequences, Reitman paints him as the young military vet undone by his intense love for a run-around wife. Determined not to lose anything from his source material, Reitman further elaborates on Adele’s past, as well as Henry’s budding friendship with a sassy new girl in town (Brighid Fleming) whose precociousness is annoying to say the least.

Only in the latter half does Reitman restore some rightful tension into the proceedings as a neighbour drops by for an unexpected visit and Adele is called to watch a friend’s disabled son for a day.  And yet, even if Reitman fumbles with the material, his cast ultimately save the day. Winslet is uniformly excellent as the sad and exhausted Adele, making her character’s pain real and present in a way few actresses can manage to. Brolin complements Winslet’s searing performance with an equally intense portrayal brimming with a tortured aura. It is thanks to Winslet and Brolin’s chemistry that the emotional and sexual interplay between their characters sizzles.

Yet even with the duo’s compelling acting, ‘Labour Day’ feels exactly as its title implies no thanks to surprisingly flat-footed writing and directing from Reitman. There are elements of a sexually charged wish fulfilment fantasy here, but these are largely watered down; instead, Reitman strains to find pathos in a setup that strains credibility at many turns, and ends up being no more than two-hanky fodder for those waiting for the next Sparks novel. It’s an undeniable comedown for a director who has built a reputation as one of the most promising young ones to watch, and if there’s one thing that should come out of it, it’s that Reitman should stay away from the stuff that belongs in sappy romances. 

Movie Rating:

(Compelling performances from Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin can’t quite redeem this sappy tearjerker from the stuff of die-hard romantics)

Review by Gabriel Chong