Four Good Days (2021) Movie Review
Four Good Days is based on a true story that appeared in The Washington Post about a young woman who is a drug addict in the Midwest. Molly (Mila Kunis) shows up at her mother Deb’s (Glenn Close) house tweaking and looking for some money. It’s clear Deb has trust issues with Molly because she mentions the locks have been changed and there’s an alarm that goes off each time a door is opened. Molly is a mess – rail thin, rotted teeth, gaunt, and manic from a years long heroin addiction.
Deb initially tells Molly that she can’t stay but is eventually worn down by the desire to help her child. She takes Molly to a rehab clinic for three days where she can withdraw. This is something Molly is familiar with as she has been there fifteen times in the last few years. It is sn endless cycle of getting clean and then slipping up. This time there is a new treatment available for Molly. A monthly shot of an opioid antagonist that essentially would prevent Molly from getting high even if she were to use drugs. In order to get the shot, Molly has to stay clean for four days otherwise the shot will cause severe complications. Deb’s saddled with the task of watching over Molly for those four days to make sure she doesn’t use.
Four Good Days has excellent acting from Kunis and Close. Kunis is nearly unrecognizable as Molly. She’s blonde, much thinner than usual, and is constantly fidgeting with something. She infuses Molly with many of the qualities that tie in to her addiction. She is an excellent liar, she’s charming when she wants to be, she’s vicious often for no reason. She has a special talent for claiming little responsibility for anything and constantly looking for someone else to blame for the things that happen to her. You’re never quite sure when Molly is being real and when she’s manipulating. The inner turmoil and battle within herself to stay clean is on full display for the entire one hour and forty minute runtime.
Glenn Close is reliable as usual, playing a mother who never stops worrying about her daughter even as she tries to set boundaries to protect herself from heartache. Close and Kunis have the type of chemistry where you truly believe they’ve known each other for their whole lives and have a close and complicated relationship. Unfortunately, Four Good Days as a whole doesn’t rise to the excellent acting performances. You get the gist of the story after the initial scenes and then it feels like recycled scenes until the end. It does showcase addiction and the suffering it causes not only for the addict but those closest to them. But it doesn’t add anything new to the genre and other movies like Beautiful Boy have done it perhaps better. That being said, Four Good Days is a solid little movie that showcases a complex mother-daughter relationship and the growing opioid crisis in America that will resonate with many.
You’ll like this movie if:
1. You like movies that showcase the difficulties of addiction
2. You want to see Mila Kunis’ best acting performance since Black Swan
3. You like stories about mother-daughter relationships
