With Meryl Streep having just been Oscar nominated for a record 18th time, it’s easy to overlook our own Kate Winslet.

Especially as this is her first leading role since winning the best actress Oscar herself for The Reader five years ago in 2009.

But as Little Children (2006) and Revolutionary Road (2009) have proved, no other British actress is this much at home playing troubled American wives and mothers.

We meet her latest character Adele struggling at home in 1987.

With no husband left to do the manly jobs, the fire has gone out of her soul.

Teenage son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) has to put her automatic car into ‘drive’ mode just to get them to a local, superstore.

Here, their semi-rural lives are turned upside down when escaped killer Frank (Josh Brolin) takes hold of the boy and invites himself to say at their place.

The TV news is dominated by his presence, neighbours are worried and the police are everywhere, but Jason Reitman handles the growing tension with astonishing restraint.

Unlike his previous movies, Up In The Air and Juno, there’s no dash for laughs to impede the growing, honest intensity about what may or may not happen in Adele’s house as time inevitably runs out.

Despite the 12A certificate, Labor Day has the menacing intent of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones but is much more even in its approach.

The adult-to-child relationships echo Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton’s seminal The Night of the Hunter (1955), Alan Bates in Whistle Down The Wind (1961) and Clint Eastwood’s A Perfect World (1993).

It’s unlike anything we’ve seen in memory – and all the more absorbing as a result.

Adele is frightened to live, yet determined to protect her son; Frank would swap lost decades for days of inner peace.

The adults dominate the film, but young Henry’s nightmare is its anchor.

As a coming of age drama about a boy having responsibility thrust upon his shoulders, it’s the best in class since Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2009).

Brolin, Oscar nominated for Milk (2009), has rarely been this good, while Winslet is so sublime you’ll feel every ache in her heart.

Based on a novel by Joyce Maynard (To Die For), Labor Day lacks degrees of plausibility.

But the performances, the cinematography (Eric Steelberg) and a simple yet impressively claustrophobic score by Hertfordshire’s own Rolfe Kent compensate brilliantly.