Director Jason Reitman has been struggling to find his footing since the one-two punch of Thank You For Smoking and Juno. His follow-up efforts have been less meritorious—the critical praise for the narratively cluttered, morally incoherent Up in the Air was a baffling lowlight of 2009. With his latest feature, Labor Day, Reitman has rediscovered some of his storytelling chops. This is unexpected, given how far afield the new film is from his usual territory of situational and satirical comedy. Labor Day, it turns out, is an earnest, character-driven melodrama, with tragedy and thriller jottings in the margins.
True to the film’s title, the story unfolds over the 1987 Labor Day weekend in New England. Single mom Adele (Kate Winslet) has been stuck in an anxious, depressive quagmire since her divorce. Her 13-year-old son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) tries to keep her afloat, but is aware of his limitations. Into their lonely, wounded lives comes Frank (Josh Brolin), an escaped convict who pleads for their aid. Hobbled by a leg injury, he asks only for a few hours' sanctuary to rest. In short order, however, hours become an overnight stay, and then a long weekend. Soon, Frank is doing chores and playing catch with Henry, while Adele encourages the man's romantic attentions. Things quickly become complicated, both emotionally and legally, for this ad hoc family.
Labor Day has its stumbles: the plot doesn't go anywhere unexpected, the voice-over narration is pointless, and the ending is ungainly. Yet the film still possesses a straightforward simplicity that is admirable. It doesn't hurt that Winslet, Brolin, and Griffith are all in fine form, their characters outlined in bold, memorable strokes. While inferior to Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World—with which it shares several elements—Labor Day is nonetheless the sort of solid American drama that has become distressingly rare of late.
