The Movie: Four Good Days
The Director: Rodrigo García
The Cast: Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Stephen Root, Joshua Leonard, Sam Hennings
The Story: A mother helps her daughter work through four crucial days of recovery from substance abuse.
The Review:
I'm a big fan of Mila Kunis and Glenn Close is one of the most widely respected actors working in the business today. Both have had excellent careers and continue to excel with a variety of roles and different types of performances. With each of them in place as the mother and the daughter of this story that is based off of real things that happened to real people, I figured this would be a no brainer, tear jerker type of movie.
The opioid crisis has been one of the most deadly and devastating events in American history and yet it has never really been front and center of the country's collective consciousness. The whole thing was clearly created by the pharmaceutical industry's need to keep the population medicated rather than actually treated for whatever our ailments are whether they be physical, emotional or mental. Doctor's are incentivised to prescribe whatever pill they can find to fill a quota and keep people coming back for more even if they are actually detrimental to a person's health rather then beneficial.
Mile Kunis plays Molly, a young woman who has been the victim of the crisis and a product of a system that has seen her run through treatment programs over a dozen times. What makes Molly's story a bit more striking is that Molly is a real person and this movie is based off of a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post article written by Eli Saslow. Sadly, this story is much more common than any of us might think and I believe the reason it remains under the surface is because if we really take the time to dig into sources and solutions, the shadiness of the pharmaceutical would hit closer to home than anyone would be wanting to discover. I mean, how many people out there aren't medicated for one reason or another without really understanding why or how.
As for the movie itself, it unfortunately gets bogged down with a story that's quite honestly lacking in any real emotional punch after the first act. You can guess exactly how it's going to play out every step of the way and in every instance you would most likely be correct. Both Kunis and Close are very good although they just aren't given that much to work with. As important of a story as this is, I would hesitate to recommend it because there are other films that tell a similar story in much more engaging ways.
The Verdict:
Four Good Days is a valiant attempt at showing the pitfalls of drug addiction and how the opioid crisis has torn apart families across the country it just suffers from not being very interesting.
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