by Kaylie Blais
Labor Day is not worth your money or your time. If all you care about is the actors, watch them in a different movie because this has major plot and character problems.
An escaped convict (Brolin) takes Adele (Winslet) and her son hostage and makes them hide him from the cops over Labor Day weekend. During this three-four day stay, Brolin and Winslet’s characters fall in love.
The random placements of flashbacks of a young man and a young woman together seem unnecessary. These flashbacks though useful to seeing Frank’s past (a.k.a. his crime) have no impact on the current timeline in the movie because Brolin’s character (Frank) never confronts or talks about his past with Winslet’s character (Adele). This makes no sense to me. When a convict is in your house bonding with your son, you never think to ask him what he did to wind up in jail.
Another questionable plot point is Adele’s son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) and his discovery of girls. Not only did this have no relation to the main plot, but it is not believable. This thirteen year old has a convicted murderer in his house, and at night instead of fearing for his life, he’s thinking about a girl’s see-through shirt or how to get a girlfriend the next day. I don’t care if hormones are kicking this character should fear for his life. This subplot belonged in a coming of age movie targeted at teenagers not a movie about love developing between a man who takes a woman and her son hostage.
That being said there were some things that were okay about the movie. Adele and her son have a strong bond (at least in the beginning) that you would expect between a mother and a son. There were a lot of moments that you would expect a parent and a child to show. Henry worried about being abandoned when Adele and Frank transformed into a couple. Adele worried about Henry not having a constant father figure in his life and her shame that he had to take care of her instead of the other way around.
However once they got comfortable around Frank, Adele and Henry were able to individually bond with Frank, and the three characters were able to have a comfortable and loving bond with each other(if you ignore the fact that they knew each other for three days and one member had just escaped prison). That family atmosphere made the love between Frank and Adele more believable. When Adele first met Frank, he had adopted a threatening manner towards her son, and it was during this time that Adele hid a kitchen knife on her person as protection for her and her son. However as Frank adopted a more fatherly attitude towards Henry by playing baseball and cooking with him, Adele fell so in love with him she agreed to flee for Canada with Frank and take Henry with them. Still a little hard to believe (especially after only three days) but it added a little depth to their relationship that could offer a little support to this decision.
The one thing that was great about this movie was Winslet’s portrayal of her character’s struggle with depression after her husband left her when she miscarried for the fourth time. In a take with a close up of her hands, Adele’s are never steady, and she often stammers over her words. You see her struggling to get out of bed in the morning and stuttering over her sentences when she feels stressed. She’s withdrawn from everyone around her besides her son. When she does venture out of her house, it’s clear that she hasn’t interacted with anyone in a long time by their surprise at seeing her. I thought her portrayal was spot on and the only silver lining for this movie.
Unfortunately one woman’s acting can’t carry a whole movie, and I rate this a C with the recommendation that you not put this movie at the top of your list.
