28 Days, 2000

28 Days, 2000
Director: Betty Thomas
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Viggo Mortensen, Dominic West, Elisabeth Perkins


Stage: Home TV selection on a rainy Sunday evening

28 days in short: A big-city newspaper columnist is forced to enter a drug and alcohol rehab center after ruining her sister's wedding and crashing a stolen limousine


Preps: nothing in perticular. Remember seeing this ages ago. And I adore Sandra Bullock, nothing more I could want from a Sunday evening.


Reality: Now let me think. How hard is it to accept to be an alcoholic and how hard it is to decide to go back. To think about your life, your decisions and your way of living and making it right. Are you entitled to make it right? Who will believe you are for real? Who will make your path easier and who will support you when being down? The movie is supposed to be somehow a romantic comedy (the relationship between the "alcoholic" Sandra and her spouse. The problem is he doesn't see her as and alcoholic and furthermore, doesn't really support her. No problem here, but she really wants to get better after spending some time in an institution.

How about making friends in an institution? A hard way to follow. Hard talking, hard problems.. but.. they can get to the core of your soul and in the end make it allright. The problem is that most re-habs don't want to change and even the best institution won't make them feel better or change the way they live their lives. In a sense, makes them go back to drinking instantly when leaving the institution.

I believe there is a lesson to be learned here for anyone. We are all walking from time to time on the verge of insanity, that is connected with alcohol. And some of us go through this. The others are so brave that they ended up the better path and didn't need an institution to cure them. Nevertheless, a good piece to think about how you solve your problems in past and how do you do it now. Is it connected with alcohol? Is this a backyard, where you drown your problems, or just an escape for a few hours that you can control? The piece implies you better not turn into a pool where you sink your problems. Because it is a long and painful way to come back.


My personal rating: 6,0 (a decent fun for Sunday. Plus: will make you think about the drinking nights and the sense they make. Or not any sense they make. And the problem you have when starting to get cured)


28 days on IMDB