Mark Reviews Movies: FOUR GOOD DAYS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 29, 2021

Four Good Days doesn't quite judge its characters, as they deal directly with addiction, but it definitely plays just a few too many cynical games with them. The movie, co-written by director Rodrigo García and Eli Saslow, possesses some admirable qualities, particularly in its depiction of the rocky relationship between an addict and someone who loves and wants to help that person. Its most questionable and ineffective characteristics, though, come from one place. García and Saslow simply don't trust the central relationship enough to allow it to drive the drama here.

Instead, we get a lot of baggage, some of it relating specifically to these characters and a lot of it feeling as if the screenwriters are piling more complications upon these characters for effect. The whole story revolves around a kind of slow race against a ticking clock. Our main characters fight and bicker so much that the relationship ultimately comes across as a battle between two stubborn archetypes, without giving us a sense of the obvious love, no matter how strained, that's driving their actions.

The character at war with her addiction is treated with a few moments of unnecessary humiliation and shame, and addiction itself, while spoken about with plenty of compassion, is presented with a kind of "scared straight" mentality. We don't just have to learn how desperate and dismal such a life can be. In García's mind, we also have to see how terrifying, dangerous, and demoralizing it can be. The movie may go out of its way to repeatedly say that it holds no judgment over Molly (Mila Kunis), who is trying to recover from drug addiction, but what we see and what secrets are revealed over time tell a slightly different story.

Molly returns to her childhood home one day, looking to get inside. Her mother Deb (Glenn Close) has been through this and experienced the results too many times to believe Molly's assertion that she's ready to get clean. Promises have been broken. Lies have been told. Money and possessions have been stolen. Deb lives in an alarm-laden suburban fortress now with her second husband Chris (Stephen Root), who supports her decision for this brand of tough love. It doesn't stop Deb from checking on Molly, sitting and sleeping on the walkway through the day and night.

The next morning, Deb agrees to drive Molly to a rehabilitation facility for her 14th attempt at getting clean. After a three-day stay, a doctor informs the two that Molly could be injected with an opioid blocker, which would halt the physiological effects of her drug of choice, eventually and potentially ending her dependence on heroin. There's a catch: Molly has to stay clean for another four days before the injection can be given. Otherwise, there might be a violent reaction.

The setup forces mother and daughter to live under the same roof for the first time in a long time. Deb doesn't trust Molly, making sure the beeps for an open door in the house are loud and hiding anything of value from her. None of this helps Molly, whose triggers to using include the feelings that her mother's lack of trust raise.

It's a fascinating, difficult, and complex dynamic that, surely, is the foundation for plenty of character-based drama. García and Saslow retain some of that, as the two women—so at odds with each other from their past relationship and current dilemma—try to adjust to being in close quarters and to understand each other.

Deb is our focal point, as she works to believe Molly's determination to get clean and tries to overcome the almost-paranoid fear of being hurt again. Close's performance is one of subtle but considerable physicality, giving us the impression of someone who's always on edge but forcing a strong exterior. Even as Deb begins to trust her daughter, there's almost a psychological reflex to find holes in Molly's stories and keep tabs on where anything of value is. The screenplay doesn't criticize this behavior, but it doesn't entirely let Deb off the hook for it, either.

As for Molly, Kunis plays the character with somber honesty, although the screenplay gradually undermines its early attempts to empathize with her. It starts with some thoughtfulness, giving Molly a sincere voice in terms of the cycle, psychological underpinnings, and effects of addiction. In one uncomfortable scene later, though, the character is presented as a case study for a classroom (It's played a confessional but feels more like public humiliation), and then, she gives Deb an accidental tour of a drug den, where all kinds of awful things are on display. Molly eventually becomes the source of all the story's conflict, as lies and deceits come to light.

There is undeniably some truthfulness to the character's behavior, but considering the movie's more compassionate view near the beginning, the constant confrontations (between Deb and Molly, Deb and Chris, and even Deb and her ex-husband, played by Sam Hennings) and revelations of what Molly has been doing in secret shift this story into the realm of melodrama. Four Good Days transforms from a story in which there are no easy answers and only tough questions into one of convoluted situations and one, simple solution.

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