Although we all would prefer to see an end to the wars in the world, it seems like an unfeasible dream. Even if a ware ends somewhere, there is another place where another one begins. A Perfect Day takes place in the Balkans during the nineties, when the war is almost over and the UN is doing everything possible to make the area safe again. A Doctors Without Borders team works in the area and has the task to ensure that all wells contain clean drinking water. This may mean that there are bodies to be removed from those wells, to guarantee the water remains usable. Mambru (Benicio Del Toro) is trying to get the dead, swollen body of an obese man out of a well with his car, but because his equipment is in bad shape he fails. He contacts his colleague B (Tim Robbins), who along with newcomer Sophie (Mélanie Thierry) come over to help. It is the beginning of a long day ..
If you had to give this film a subtitle it would probably be A Perfect Day: The Search for Rope. The word rope is mentioned so much that it slowly started to get on my nerves. It is quite obvious that they need a good rope to do their work, but once that is clear it may have been better to just show them searching for it. During their search they run a huge risk because the country is not only full of mines, but also because not everyone knows that the war is over and each person can be armed. Those are not the only issues, as the team is still be accountable to the UN, which strictly abides by their rules. Bureaucracy often stops them solving a problem which would be simple. In that environment Mambru and his team must do their work. An unexpected investigation and picking up a boy complicates the situation even further.
A Perfect Day is a movie that works well in some areas, but overall doesn’t completely come together. You get a good sense of how difficult it is to work in a war environment and survive and which horrible scenes you may encounter. Despite the serious subject matter, the film also contains humor, for which Tim Robbins is primarily responsible. It is a way to deal with the situation and I can imagine it, but it sometimes takes away tension from a scene. Although the actors do their best I didn’t always feel like I was watching the characters, so I was not completely pulled into the story. Calling A Perfect Day a bad film goes too far, because it succeeds, to a certain level, to make the consequences of war clear, so you can empathize better at what people have to go through and live there or why some of them decide to flee.
