Rating :   0/100            COMPLETE INCINERATION            111 Min       

Why, why, why oh why did Kate Winslet agree to do this film? This is beyond abysmal. It begins by suggesting it might be going down into ‘Straw Dogs’ (71 & 2011) territory, but then it quickly does a U-turn into the realm of Nicholas Sparks (although Joyce Maynard actually wrote the book this is based on). This essentially tells the story of an escaped prisoner (Josh Brolin) who abducts Winslet and her young son in order to hide out at their house for the evening, where he ‘has’ to tie her up, even though he’s a nice guy you understand, so that it looks like he gave them no choice should someone come in. Within a few days she has been banged so many times by him that she is quite willing to give up everything and take her son out of school, take all their money out of the bank, and flee with him across the border to Canada.

It’s ridiculous, I’m surprised he didn’t try to have it off with the boy at the same time and manage to sell it to the pair of them as normal. To make the clichéd point that perhaps someone who has been sent to jail may still be a nice person, and someone walking around free may not be, we see a mentally handicapped child left over at the house by his mother to be looked after by Winselt and co for the day. Not fearing the mentally handicapped child’s ability to recognise him as a CONVICTED FELON ON THE LAM Brolin teaches the kid baseball and gives him, presumably, the best day of his live with a ‘real man’ father figure, much as he presents to Winslet’s son. On the return of the mother, the child achieves the impossible and recognises who Brolin is and dutifully tries to inform his loving mother, who, in order to shut him up whilst she is talking, turns around and SOCKS HIM IN THE FACE, before cheerfully saying goodbye and carting the dazed and befuddled child out of the door.

This child abuse doesn’t end with the loving parents of the town though, a local police officer (played by none other than Dawson, James Van Der Beek) after seeing Winslet’s child casually walking down the street actually threatens to arrest him unless he gets in the car so that he can give him ‘a ride home’. Hmm. After Brolin begins his attempted rape/seduction of Winslet by tying her up slowly in front of her kid, he follows this up with the old one-two of baking absurdly rich and perfect peach pie, an age old seduction technique guaranteed to charm the pants off any sex starved middle aged house wife, especially if they can’t cook themselves. In the years to come we see Tobey Maguire appear as Winslet’s boy in the future and guess what he does for a living? He bakes THE SAME FUCKING PIE on an industrial scale. GET. TO. FUCK.