Day Zero (2007)

IMDb plot summary: The military draft is back, and three best friends are drafted and given 30 days to report for duty. In that time, they're forced to confront everything they believe about courage, duty, love, friendship, and honor.

Directed by Bryan Gunnar Cole. Stars Elijah Wood, Chris Klein, and Jon Bernthal.

Day Zero is set in a mid-2000s version of America where average citizens are drafted into military service to go fight in the Middle East. We follow three men, played by Elijah Wood, Chris Klein and Jon Bernthal, who are all good friends who get drafted at the same time. We join the countdown in their lives down to that day, watching them process it and figure out all the things that they are worried about, whether they're going to try to get out of it, whether it's something they're proud of. This film got absolutely eviscerated by critics, but I didn't think it was that bad. It's a little edgelord-y at times, but the core concept of it isn't terrible, and some of the acting choices are interesting. The characters are written in good balance with each other, where each one of them is saying something unique and different about their place in the world, even as they all share the experience of being semi-privileged young white men who suddenly find themselves in a position of having to give up those privileges, and how they respond to that when their country is letting them down that way. It doesn't pull off the ending, and it doesn't manage to say as much as it thinks it's saying by the time the credits roll, but I stayed engaged on the ride. It's a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, which feels absolutely incorrect, when this is clearly around a 50: adequate but not exciting.

🎥 Day Zero (2007)

📊 Ranked #2261/4218 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to The Shining (held at #2156)

beat City Slickers (#3204 → #3205)

beat The Muppets Take Manhattan (#2670 → #2671)

beat 42 (#2415 → #2416)

beat Superman Returns (#2284 → #2285)

lost to It's Kind of a Funny Story (held at #2219)

lost to Kiki's Delivery Service (held at #2250)

beat The Green Goddess (#2268 → #2269)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (held at #2260)

beat To Kill a King (#2264 → #2265)

beat The Unsinkable Molly Brown (#2262 → #2263)