The Bridges of Madison County, Hostage Edition - Labor Day

The movie Labor Day starts out pretty well, with the voice-over narrator giving the setting, a 7th-grade boy lives alone with his mother, post-divorce, in a small New Hampshire town; the mom, the always-good Kate Winslet, is sorrowful and disturbed and perhaps agoraphobic - emotions Winslet always plays very well. We see them head to a Wal-mart type store where a man emerges from a corner and grabs the young boy; the man, Josh Brolin, is bleeding and obviously in trouble. He forces boy to bring him to mom, where he pressures her to give him a ride. They take the guy - who menacingly sits in back seat with arm draped over young boy - back to their house. He asks for shelter only till nightfall, when he'll make a getaway. They quickly learn that he's an escaped prisoner serving time for murder. As he says, there are 2 sides to every story. No doubt. In fact, there are two sides to this story, because in a matter of hours, or movie minutes, Brolin turns out to be the ideal dad, lover, husband, neighbor - not only a good pal to the young boy, teaching him how to throw a baseball, which real dad never did of course, but a handyman around the house, good auto mechanic, but also smart and sensitive - a terrific cook who soon has them making pastry crust together - and he even strums away on somebody's viola or cello. And of course a great lover - bringing life into Winslet's abandoned soul. In other words: We're now in the midst of Bridges of Madison County, hostage edition. All that said, the movie is actually pretty effective in many ways. The leads are likable and credible, and I found myself rooting for a successful escape together, even though I knew, given the conventions of the genre, that would be impossible. They make some really stupid decisions in planning their escape, and the young boy also pretty much gives away the game in his desperate attempts to relate to his first girlfriend and to maintain ties to estranged dad. In fact, the boy's guilt about the giveaway is the most important element in the film, and I wish director Reitman had done more with that. The biggest flaw by far is the series of flashback scenes telling Winslet's back story - very difficult to follow or discern, probably worked OK in Joyce Maynard's source novel but in this movie they just confuse us and break up the pace. As hostage movies go it's only OK, but there aren't that many romance-hostage movies (though there are plenty about guys who seem evil and horrid on first encounter and turn out to be kind and sensitive, esp to kids and to lonely women - see the recent Mud, e.g.) and it will hold your attention, which is more than many.