Day Zero

Aroview: A 'what if scenario' study of three New Yorkers facing the draft in an alternate post-9/11 reality.

There's embattled Ivy Leaguer Chris Klein, an striking offcut from the Keanu factory, caught in a net of privilege, guilt, liberal mores, and debts of honour to family, nation, and best buddy Jon Bernthal, who offers the film's strongest performance as a staunch but sensitive taxi-driver for whom livin' is fightin'. These two polar characters find tragicomic foil in Elijah Wood's anxiety-riddled man-child, whose final transformation possesses the unmistakable, perhaps overstated, hallmarks of De Niro's Travis Bickle.

The film gets points for framing not the cataclysm of combat but the domestic impacts suffered in the days leading up to induction, the titular Day Zero, an angle on 'war film' reminiscent of the far superior Deer Hunter, another De Niro tour-de-force. Ultimately, the film aims for and ostensibly addresses courageousness, but seems at last extraneous.