While Four Good Days isn’t exactly uplifting, spending a mere 100 minutes watching the heart-wrenching, true-to-life movie feels like more than a decent use of time.
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When it comes to grim, depressing statistics about opioid addiction in America, it doesn’t take more than a handful of minutes to come across some horrifying numbers. In 2023, roughly 75,000 deaths resulted from opioids. In the same year, the total number of drug overdose fatalities was well over 100,000. And while 2024 saw a decrease in numbers, the problem clearly remains massive.
Because the numbers are so high it can be difficult to fathom just how much chaos and heartache drug addiction has unleashed on millions of families. For both those suffering from the addiction itself, and those caught in its unwitting crosshairs—friends, siblings, parents and grandparents, children deprived of moms and dads—it’s a phenomenon that has wreaked havoc in countless, heart-wrenching ways.
Four Good Days, directed by Rodrigo Garcia, is about a 31-year old woman and her decade-plus long addition to heroin. The film has its origins in a lengthy Washington Post article written by Eli Saslow, which details the tumultuous relationship between a mother and daughter as the latter struggles to rid herself of the horrors of heroin. Garcia makes a few minor changes to the story, but the overall narrative and script (which was partly written by Saslow) stays close to the source material.
In Four Good Days, the mother and daughter are Deb and Molly, played by Glenn Close and Mila Kunis. The film’s opening sixty seconds convey Molly’s sad transformation. Sunlight hits the face of a happy girl blissfully playing on the beach; the scene then cuts to present-day Molly walking down a street, barefoot, haggard, emaciated. Before long, we see that her teeth are completely rotted, her gums diseased.
When she arrives at her mom’s, she puts on a performance she’s given countless other times over the years. She wants to get clean; she wants to be in her kids’ lives; she wants to finish school. Deb isn’t buying it, not at this point, not after a decade of lies, deception, and theft. (Deb has gone to the extent of putting alarms on every door.) Molly pleads for a place to stay, but Deb stands her ground.
The next morning, though, when she sees Molly still outside, she gives her a cup of coffee and drives her barely willing daughter to detox, where she’s been fourteen times before. Three days later, she meets with a doctor who brings up the option of an opioid antagonist. The once-a-month shot “essentially makes you immune to getting high,” he explains. Molly agrees to take the shot; but she must go another four days being clean before it’s safe to inject.
The movie, as its name makes clear, is about those four tumultuous, brutal, uncertain days. Partly because of the doctor’s admonition that Molly shouldn’t be alone, and partly because her detox bed needs to go to someone else, Deb allows her daughter to carry out those four days at home.
As the hours and days slowly tick away, issues of trust are omnipresent and emotions run high. Molly and Deb reminisce about, and frequently dispute, the past. They hurl accusations and open up wounds. At times, each is guarded; at others, vulnerable and open. More often than not, it’s chaos. But there’s no question there’s genuine love between them, and the moments where they bond as mother and daughter are quite moving.
As for the causes of Molly’s addiction, Four Good Days doesn’t pinpoint any one particular thing, though it makes clear (as the Washington Post article does) that Molly’s first exposure to opioids came after a water skiing injury; an opioid prescription (and refills) were essentially given out with the same kind of nonchalance that comes when putting flyers on vehicle windshields. Purdue Pharma isn’t mentioned by name (nor is any company), but many viewers, I suspect, will think about the disgraced company more than once during the course of the film.
In addition to the fateful, post-injury doctor’s visit, we see that a broken marriage and a period of parental neglect are other factors that influenced Molly’s turn to hardcore drugs. During one argument, a flummoxed Deb responds to her daughter, “You think I’m the reason you’re an addict?” It’s a powerful scene.
Another scene that stands out is when Deb comforts her daughter in bed before heading to sleep. “It’s another you. It’s not the real you. She isn’t you,” she tells Molly about her behavior under drugs. The line is a bit trite, and Molly can’t help but sarcastically respond, “mind bending, Mom.” But trite or not, there’s truth to it, and it’s part of what makes serious addiction so devastating—people turn into the worst, most unpleasant versions of themselves.
Four Good Days, with its two solid acting performances and timely subject matter, is worth watching. For all the constant talk about how the latest technology is going to reshape our lives and our world, movies like this are much needed reminders that there are other things to worry and think about than the latest tech headlines. The opioid epidemic remains. Suicide rates are nearly the highest they’ve been in the last 25 years. Loneliness has become a serious issue. We don’t need to dwell on these things, but neither should we let them stray far from our minds.
Spectatio 