Safe Passage

Though she's seen all but one of her seven sons grow up and leave home, Mag Singer (Sarandon) still has sufficiently strong maternal impulses to get in a blind funk every time she has a dream she thinks is a premonition of danger; she'll even ring her reluctantly estranged husband (Shepard) about her anxieties. However, just as she and 14-year-old Simon are about to move out of the family home, one of Mag's 'signs' proves true: Percival, who'd become so tired of life at home that he'd joined the Marines, is feared dead after a terrorist bomb at his Sinai barracks. Cue for the rest of the family to gather to work over old resentments, rivalries, loyalties and memories. Despite sturdy performances (the sons include Leonard and Astin), this film, from a novel by Ellyn Bache, is a tepid, dispiriting effort. A tidy, small-town world is on display. Irritations are minor and all, ultimately, forgivable. Everyone, however outcast they may sometimes feel, has a place and function in the grand familial scheme of things. The metaphors - notably Shepard's incipient blindness - are flagged, and the whole thing's a string of clichés.