Therapist Jane Swigart has noted that a mother's relationship with her children provides "a theater of soul" revealing her deepest hopes, fears, destructive urges, and capacities for love. In a time when our culture seems to simultaneously idealize and devalue mothers, it is refreshing to see a film such as Safe Passage, which examines the emotional life of a mother who is neither a saint nor a monster.

Susan Sarandon plays a woman who has a premonition dream that one of her seven sons is in danger. A terrorist bomb has destroyed one of the Marine barracks in the Sinai where Percival is stationed and it will take a few days to identify the dead.

Sarandon's family rallies around her as they wait for news. During this crisis, she realizes that her sons are decent, honest, and loving — proof positive that she has fulfilled her sacred trust by raising them well.

Safe Passage is a valentine to mothers who have fought the good fight and kept the faith in all the messes and miseries of family life.