Publication Date: 07-08-2025

28 Days (2000) review

Dir. Betty Thomas

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Betty Thomas’ 28 Days confidently navigates a narrative terrain ripe for sitcom clichés and convenient plotting. Sure, it helps when your lead actress is Sandra Bullock, who can provide even thinly drawn characters a degree of dimensionality, but Thomas also has a winner in Susannah Grant’s script that doesn’t sidestep hard truths nor the difficult nature of substance abuse and rehab.

28 Days is the story of Gwen Cummings (Bullock), who we first meet on a wild night of drinking and clubbing alongside her boyfriend, Jasper (Dominic West). The two wake up the next morning, late and hungover for Gwen’s sister’s (Elizabeth Perkins) wedding. Arriving at the church already drunk, Gwen indulges in some more cocktails, gives her sister and her new husband a tasteless toast, knocks over the wedding cake while dancing, steals a limousine in order to buy another one, and then crashes the vehicle into a home. All this in the first 10 minutes. I miss when movies used to move at the speed of television.

The wedding kerfuffle is the back-breaking straw. Gwen is sentenced to 28 days of rehab at Serenity Glen, where she’ll be confronted with her addiction and forced to get off the sauce by any means necessary. That includes harmonizing “Lean on Me” with fellow patients; reciting Christ-y chants; and learning that she does in fact have a lot in common with the other addicts around her, who are all on the difficult journey towards sobriety.

Many of these patients are played by familiar character actors: Reni Santoni is a former doctor who pumped his own stomach trying to get clean; Oliver (Yes, Dear‘s Mike O’Malley) is a sex addict who can’t help but make passes at every female in the facility; Dutch (Alan Tudyk) is a sensitive albeit well-meaning dancer with a bad cocaine addiction; Roshanda (the great Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a woman struggling for custody of her two children, who appear in an emotional scene when they confront their mother about her drug use.

Grant — who wrote Erin Brockovich, released a month prior to 28 Days — finds success in humanizing a gaggle of patients without making them a quirky brigade of society’s also-rans. She finds their humanity, and recognizes that sobriety, when achieved, is always a journey, so the characters remain a flawed work-in-progress even after the credits roll. Still, Gwen is her central focus, and she finds some support via a counselor, played by Steve Buscemi, who gives personal lectures of his struggles with substance abuse in extended sequences I’m sure many in recovery might find enlightening. At one point, he talks about a rehabilitated patient’s desire to have a relationship by saying that the advice he gives starts with them getting a plant. And then a pet. In two years, if both the plant and pet are still alive, then consideration can be given to a romantic relationship.

Even before this lecture, Gwen starts quietly mulling over her relationship with Jasper. He’s kind enough to visit her at Serenity Glen, but enabling enough to try and sneak her champagne and other drugs she’s trying to shake. She finds some platonic comfort in the presence of Eddie Boone (Viggo Mortensen), a baseball pitcher fighting to get clean. A lesser movie likely would’ve had these characters ending up together in the end, but like rehab, this movie isn’t pretty nor does have it come equipped with inevitabilities wrapped up in a neat little package.

Another meaningful subplot in the film revolves around Andrea (Azura Skye), a teenage heroin addict; also Gwen’s roommate. There’s an argument to be made that 28 Days should’ve been about her story. Andrea’s story, however, is given more depth and nuance than a lot of other secondary stories, reinforcing Grant’s commitment to making all of these individuals’ screentime serve the purpose of truly impactful character development. Judging by the critical reception 28 Days received when it was first released, there’s reason to predict that so many character-driven dramas were once seen as blasé. 25 years later, we don’t nearly see enough of them.

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Viggo Mortensen, Dominic West, Elizabeth Perkins, Azura Skye, Steve Buscemi, Alan Tudyk, Mike O’Malley, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Reni Santoni, Diane Ladd, and Margo Martindale. Directed by: Betty Thomas.