Safe Passage is a 1994 drama movie starring Susan Sarandon, Nick Stahl, Sam Shepard, Sean Astin, and Jason London.
Cast
Plot
This movie stars Susan Sarandon as Maggie Singer, a superstitious and moderately psychic woman who is difficult to deal with because of her obsessiveness. Her husband isn't that easy to deal with either because he's so driven, and that's why they're divorcing. He now sleeps in his workshop, where it appears he is some form of inventor. She has decided to move, now that she only has one child remaining in the house, into the city and take a job as a civil servant. If she can pass her exam, that is. The movie opens very quickly, establishing Maggie having one of her rather reliable premonition dreams. She worries for her sons, uncertain which one is in danger. The television quickly reveals that there has been a terrorist explosion in a military compound in Iraq. This is bad, because one of their sons is an officer there.
One by one, Maggie's remaining sons arrive at the house to gather with the family. Alfred, the eldest, is first, along with his fiance, Cynthia, a shrink with two small sons. More of the children arrive, the twins Merel and Darren, who are in college, and Izzy, the young genius, arrive as well. Two noticeable absentions are, of course, officer Percival, and Gideon. The family desperately tries to find information about Percival, but they are also forced to reconcile various conflicts in their lives. Maggie begins to notice that Simon, the youngest boy who still lives with her, is rather necromancically self-abusive and shares her superstitious and intuitive abilities to a smaller degree. Patrick, Maggie's husband, has a strange blindness that comes and goes. Alfred attempts to be the responsible eldest son, handling matters even when Maggie doesn't want him to. This is because Alfred is mechanical and emotionless, which Maggie fears is her fault. But she is capable of sharing deep secrets and great beauty to her children, as Alfred reminds her of a memory in which she taught him to understand a piece of classical music. Alfred begins to study the blindness, and eventually finds the cause. The problem is that Patrick has no use for Izzy because Izzy has no talent for athletics. He is big on running and forces it on his children, even though it doesn't do anyone any good, and leaving Maggie to tend to the children's wounds and weaknesses on her own.
But Maggie is often left with the feeling that she still faces her nightmare on her own. She speaks with her employer, and the family tries to deflect the neighbors. During this time, Maggie also begins to reflect on how different, how difficult Percival was as opposed to her other children. Willful and defiant, in flashbacks, she remembers that Percival was once a potent runner, that Percival was quite violent and attacked his brother as a child, forcing her to exile him from the car. This is what started him running. She also recalls the time he was rendered unconscious at a football game, so she ran across the field and rescued him, taking him to the doctor herself. Rather than grateful, Percival is embarrassed, so Maggie orders him to quit the team. She also recalls that he liked to cut class and smoke weed, and she caught him. So to help him understand why smoking is bad, she smoked, and then pleaded with him to remain in school. Instead, he declared he was following friend Tim O'Neil into the army.
Failing her civil service exam, Maggie is able to confide and talk only to Cynthia, who can understand her better. As Maggie complains that she was thirty-five before she could eat a dinner without helping a boy eat, too, she suspects that seven children were a recipe for losing one of them, and yet, Cynthia forces her to admit she couldn't bear to lose a single one. Which leads right back to the uncomfortable silence of Percival's probable death.
Maggie and several of her children decide to clean out the garage, a task she repeatedly asks Simon to do and gets ignored on. Alfred tries to stop her, but Maggie refuses, and provokes him to the point of starting a fire to burn up all the garbage. Maggie takes this as a sign that Alfred can feel, and he's healthier than she thought he was.
The characters are really shaken up when Gideon returns, as Patrick had refused to permit anyone to call Gideon because Gideon was about to begin training for a valuable race. Maggie senses Gideon is hurting, and speaks to him. He confesses that he feels responsible, because he started running to be with Percival, but he defeated Percival in a race, and Percival then quit racing, and began to think of joining the army instead. Maggie helps him see that blaming himself, or anyone else, won't save Percival's life. Percival was responsible for his own choices, and nobody else. Gideon doesn't fully heal, however, until Patrick forces him to drive, abjuring Izzy's offer. Patrick makes Gideon take him to a track, where they run. Patrick is hardest, and possibly cruelest, on Gideon, assuming that he made Gideon a winner this way. Since it was Gideon who made himself a winner despite, not because, of his father, a disgusted, Gideon tells him off and walks off the track.
Simon has a paper route, and it includes a dog that likes to attack him. Near the end of the film, Maggie, helping with the route, senses trouble and goes back to Simon. She sees the dog making an attack, and she brutally counter-attacks, nearly killing the dog until Simon stops her. They are left a bloody mess, and make up a lie that someone left their garden hose on.
Finally, they get a telephone call. It turns out to be Percival himself, and the family, including Cynthia, gather together as a recording Percival made with a video tape plays on the television, providing commentary at the end of the movie.
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