Jason Reitman has directed some acerbic comedies, notably Up in the Air and the gloriously misanthropic Young Adult. Labor Day shows his soft, sweet side – as soft, sweet and indeed squidgy as the pies that figure prominently. Kate Winslet is depressed small-town divorcee Adele, whose home is chosen one summer as a hideout by an escaped convict. As it turns out, Josh Brolin's Frank is a tender, decent fugitive and a solicitous pair of hands around the house – doing repairs, playing surrogate dad to Adele's teenage son (Gattlin Griffith) and preaching the therapeutic value of pie-making in a scene that's bound to be spoofed for years to come.

The initial Hitchcockian tension soon slackens into slop, with a dash of lukewarm eroticism. A quality cast rises above the pulpiness, but Winslet and Brolin are required mainly to simmer, and to sweat decorously – more decorously than Reitman must have done when he realised how disastrously he'd blown his reputation with this folksy tosh.