| 28 Days | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Betty Thomas |
| Written by | Susannah Grant |
| Produced by | Jenno Topping |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Declan Quinn |
| Edited by | Peter Teschner |
| Music by | Richard Gibbs |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Releasing |
Release dates |
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Running time | 104 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $43 million[1] |
| Box office | $62.2 million[1] |
28 Days is a 2000 Americancomedy-drama film directed byBetty Thomas and written bySusannah Grant.Sandra Bullock stars as Gwen Cummings, a newspaper columnist obliged to enterrehabilitation foralcoholism. The film costarsViggo Mortensen,Dominic West,Elizabeth Perkins,Azura Skye,Steve Buscemi, andDiane Ladd.
Gwen Cummings is analcoholic who spends her nights in a drunken haze with her boyfriend, Jasper. They arrive late and disheveled to her sister Lily's wedding, where Gwen knocks over the wedding cake and drunkenly steals a limousine, crashing into a house. Given a choice between jail time or 28 days in a rehab center, she choosesrehab.
Gwen is introduced to a variety of patients:hypersexualcocaine addict Oliver, former doctor Daniel, mother of two Roshanda, older addict Bobbi Jean, and Dutch immigrant Gerhardt, and is assigned as roommate to teenageheroin addict Andrea. Angry and resistant, Gwen refuses to take part in treatment or admit she is an alcoholic. Throughout this, Gwen struggles withflashbacks of her addict mother, who died of an overdose when Gwen and Lily were children.
On visiting day, Jasper slips Gwen a bottle ofpainkillers and they sneak off for an inebriated day together. Cornell, the facility’s director and a recovering addict himself prepares to kick Gwen out to serve her jail sentence, but she still denies that she has a problem. Storming back to her room, she takes one of her smuggled pills, but spits it out and tosses the bottle out of her third-story window. After spending the day sufferingwithdrawal symptoms alone, she climbs out of the window to retrieve the pills. She falls, severely sprains her ankle, and is rescued by Eddie, a new patient.
Finally convinced that she has a problem, Gwen asks Cornell for another chance and begins to participate in the recovery process. Jasper visits and proposes to Gwen with champagne, which she throws in the lake. Returning to her room, she stops Andrea fromcutting herself, and grows closer to her and their fellow addicts, who warn that Jasper does not take hersobriety seriously. Gwen learns that Eddie is a professional baseball player, and they share an impulsive kiss but form a friendship instead. Discovering that he is a fan ofSanta Cruz, Andrea’s favoritesoap opera, Gwen and the group begin watching it together.
Lily attends agroup therapy session, revealing that a drunken Gwen ruined her wedding with a humiliating speech, and leaves in disgust when Gwen dismisses Lily’s feelings. Andrea will soon be released, and Gwen arranges a farewell skit for the group to perform. Jasper shows up unannounced, and finds Gwen with Eddie; picking a fight, he insults them both and Eddie punches him, straining his friendship with Gwen. She discovers Andrea dead in their bathroom from an overdose and commits herself to restoring her relationship with her sister. They reconcile and Gwen leaves the facility after completing her course of treatment, but not before Eddie warns her that Jasper is dangerous to hersobriety.
Jasper offers to make amends, but Gwen realizes he is unwilling to change to support her recovery. Leaving him and their old party friends at a bar, she encounters a horse on the street and canlift its hoof on her second try (after asking for help), an activity she struggled with in rehab. She breaks up with Jasper and is later reunited with a sober Gerhardt at a floral shop. In a mid-credits scene, Eddie recognizes an actor fromSanta Cruz who arrives as a new patient.
The film was shot in North Carolina.[3] The YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, North Carolina, served as the Serenity Glen rehabilitation center.[4]
The film opened at number two at the United States box office making $10,310,672 in its opening weekend in 2,523 screens, behindRules of Engagement, which was on its second consecutive week at the top spot. The film went on to make $37,035,515 in the U.S. The film made a total of $25,163,430 internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $62,198,945.[5]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has a 33% approval rating based on 86 reviews with an average rating of 4.9/10. The website's consensus states: "Even though28 Days is tackling a difficult subject, it comes off light and superficial, and maybe even a little preachy."[6] OnMetacritic it has a score of 46% based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[7] Audiences surveyed byCinemaScore gave the film a grade "B+ " on the scale of A to F.[8]
Peter Travers ofRolling Stone gave it a positive review and wrote: "Count this rehab a success."[9]Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times wrote: "Bullock brings a kind of ground-level vulnerability to28 Days that doesn't make her into a victim but simply into one more suitable case for treatment."[10]
Stephen Holden ofThe New York Times said it "begins with such a flurry of promise that it comes as a sharp disappointment when this drug-rehab comedy skids out of control."[11]Kenneth Turan of theLos Angeles Times called it "Too glib too often to make much of an impression any way you look at it."[12]
Singer-songwriterLoudon Wainwright III, who plays one of the center's patients, contributed four songs to the soundtrack.
Confession: The same role I did in28 Days, withSandra Bullock—I did it inTransformers. His name was Dutch, but I said: He's the same guy. Not only does he kind of seem like the same guy—he's theabsolute same guy.
the film was shot while the leaves were turning in Asheville and Wilmington, North Carolina