A Perfect Day (Benicio Del Toro, Tim Robbins)

[Holmes]

My thoughts -

A satiric drama set in war-torn Bosnia, A Perfect Day is a flawed, but entertaining film with an ironic title. Benicio Del Toro plays the head of security for a humanitarian organization. He is nearing the end of his latest tour when he is recruited to help remove an overweight corpse from a well before it decomposes and contaminates a very important source of water. Assisted by a gregarious war-zone veteran (Tim Robbins) and a fresh-faced, idealistic Frenchwoman (Mélanie Thierry), he encounters problems both bureaucratic—a constipated, overly procedure-minded UN—and logistical—a scarcity of rope—over the course of a single day and night. The film avoids the chase sequences and gunfights often expected in a film set in a war- or genocide-plagued foreign land. It instead focuses on dry humor and melancholy slice-of-life drama, slicing open this highly specific ecosystem of expatriates, translators, roadside bombs, and refugee-camp sanitation problems. There is a well-researched ring to its peculiarity. Del Toro and Robbins deliver credible performances—one the brooding antihero, the other burly comic relief—and Thierry's turn as the inexperienced Gallic newcomer is charming and soulful.

The film does have a couple minor problems (an at times drowsy pace, a few arguably heavy-handed pop-music cues) and one sizable one: an extra member of the core ensemble played by Olga Kurylenko. She has a romantic history with the Del Toro character, and the film stalls every time they argue (she loved him, he did not tell her he was in another relationship), and she is never given much to do beyond be a source of frustration for one man and inspire horny, you-need-to-bang-her chauvinism in another. A particularly extended nighttime quarrel involving her in the third act almost soured my overall estimation of the film, but a perfectly staged ending renewed my admiration just in time.

B