Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

DAY ZERO
Edited & Directed by Bryan Gunnar Cole
Produced by Anthony Moody
Written by Robert Malkani
Director of Photography, Matthew Clark
Music by: Erin O’Hara
Released by Glass Key
USA. 92 Min. Rated R
With Elijah Wood, Chris Klein, Jon Bernthal, Ginnifer Goodwin & Elisabeth Moss

Day Zero attempts to be the kind of political allegory that is becoming all too common in and out of Hollywood. Debut director Bryan Gunnar Cole sets the film in the near future when the military draft has been reinstituted. Three high school friends, now in their thirties, are drafted and attempt to deal with their differing views on war and their mandatory service. A struggling author (Elijah Wood) copes with a sense of isolationism in New York City; a successful, married lawyer (Chris Klein) has ties to important political figures; and the other, a down-and-out taxi driver (Jon Bernthal), can’t control his volatile temper.

The film is drawn in large, vague lines. It initially prods the viewer into believing that it will be heavily politicized, opening with all three men staring at the day’s mail, reluctantly opening their draft notices. And when the three meet at a bar to first discuss their potential enlistment, they make a tension-saturated toast to freedom. Ultimately, the war is never explored. The viewer only knows that it takes place across the Middle East and seems to be an extrapolation of the war in Iraq and a terrorist attack in LA – with distinct similarities to 9/11. The film walks in the shadow of the current political climate, but never decides to make a statement or to begin exploring any of the many issues that it raises. The war, the terrorist attacks, and the societal upheaval against the draft’s reinstitution are all marginalized.

The real story lies in the painful relationships between these men as they reconcile their pasts with their current lives. No one else notices the real problems of these men. Despite the large socio-economic gaps between them, only they seem to truly understand each other’s individual struggles. It is not the impending draft but the often cowardly manner in which they live their lives that is engaging.

With much of its rhetoric hollow, Day Zero is never as politically poignant as it purports to be, too content to remain on the surface. But as a film about the trio’s coming to terms with leaving the world they inhabit, possibly permanently, it has force, thanks to an entirely believable ensemble. But trying too hard to be important, the movie crumples under its own weight in attempting to make a greater statement that is largely left unfinished. Dustin L. Nelson
January 18, 2008