Not since American Pie has the all-American baked classic received this much attention in a film. In Labor Day, pastry dominates the vacuum created by a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve and ought to hide its melodramatic script in a drawer.
When he’s not Mr Fix-it-up-er or mopping their hardwood floor, escaped convict Josh Brolin is old-fashioned kidnapping Kate Winslet and her young-teenage son (Gattlin Griffith) after abducting them in a supermarket. Winslet hardly seems the type to talk to strangers, mind you. In fact she hardly seems the type to talk to practically anyone about much of anything. So when Brolin conjures up a wicked-looking chili out if kitchen scraps and a pot of coffee, we know where this is heading. By the time he roll up his sleeves and shows off his peach pie pedigree, Winslet is hooked. A few neighbors roll by checking in on Winslet and the boy but they come up empty in the Sherlock Holmes department. J. K. Simmons, biding his time here until his turn in the forthcoming Sundance winner, Whiplash, plays a concerned neighbor who might have played a larger role in this if director Jason Reitman wasn’t taking a day off from the superior screenplays he directed in Up In The Air and Juno.
By the time anyone figures out there’s something amis in the Winslet household, Brolin’s already schmoozed Winslet into waking out of her neurotic funk and personifying the Stockholm Syndrome. Some of his shaking her into experiencing genuine feelings for apparently the first time in ages seems believable. With two actors this good, Labor Day intermittently comes close to convincing. Then, just as quickly, like gnawing background noise, the screenplay’s overriding conceit comes right back to the fore. There’s just no getting over the soap opera quotient that is always bubbling under the surface. Sure, Brolin convinces that he’s quite a nice guy who must have had a good reason to commit the murder that gets him locked in the slammer for more than a decade. Furthermore, the always solid Winslet has no trouble throwing down enough emotionally troubled vibes that make it easy to grasp her vulnerability. When they perform a sensual dance together it sure is tempting to root for them.
Maybe at the very least Winslet can do conjugal visits in Labor Day 2 after Brolin gets thrown back into jail. Then after she bakes him a few pies, Brolin can pull a Jeckyl/Hyde and transform into his character in Old Boy. As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s no more ludicrous than the dollops of sentimentality that pervade Labor Day like a pie in the face.