28 Days (Wide Screen) > Reviews > Emotional Excellence

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:
Disadvantages:

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

28 Days shares the most basic template: a charming central character has a flaming burnout that lands them in rehab.
Such anguished self-confrontations are automatically moving to watch, no matter how many times you've seen them in other movies, in part because talented actors shamelessly crave the chance to play such scenes. There's a level of emotional excellence below which such movies almost never fall. 28 Days is a perfect case in point: With Sandra Bullock in the lead, writer Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) spinning the tale, and director Betty Thomas calling the shots, it's a reliably solid treat — Clean and Sober with bigger laughs and a cuter protagonist.

Scene by scene, the film is involving. The opening sequence, in which Bullock's drunk and disorderly mischief ruins her sister's wedding, is genuinely nightmarish. (Elizabeth Perkins gives a strong performance as the patient, aggrieved sibling.) The struggle with the first days at a rehab hospital is a predictably quirky gauntlet of intense therapists (Steve Buscemi, excellent); a spooky, Winona Ryder-ish roommate (Azura Skye of WB's Zoe...); and a slew of equally screwed-up companions in group therapy (among them Marianne Jean-Baptiste, of Secrets and Lies). This initiation is made bearable for Bullock and ourselves by a wealth of tightly honed wisecracks. There are flashbacks to the heroine's ghastly childhood, which are rightly brief: They add layers to our sense of her predicament, but wisely never linger. The story is never burdened with bogus "psychological" explanations. And there's a satirically astute sequence in which this ward of recovering addicts become compulsively addicted to an afternoon soap opera.

When a handsome ballplayer (Viggo Mortensen) comes on the scene, having trashed a great career with his addictions, the relationship that brews between him and Bullock — while sweet and akin to romance — is honestly dramatised in terms of the diseases from which they're trying to recover. The point of these scenes is not to twist a recovery story into a love story, but to highlight a healthy alternative to the longstanding love Bullock has shared with her boyfriend (Dominic West), an addict who is still out in the world and tries to sneak Bullock some booze during their weekly visiting hours.

Bullock is the key to what's most appealing, enjoyable, and memorable about the film. Her spirit and fresh exuberance never quite dispell the inane predictability of the story. But they do make the familiar seem fresh, and the character's healing a genuine surprise — to herself, if no one else.