"Don't feel guilty about this. They are no reasons; you're going to look for them and you ain't going to find them. Fuck you, fuck that, fuck the reasons; they are none"
This movie is quite an experience. Zero Day was released in 2003 under little fanfare, even after winning tons of praise and prize in various film festivals, including Canne. Why? Much like Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT, the subject is a very painful and controversial one -- the 1999 Columbine high school massacre. The Highschool in this movie isn't actually Columbine, neither are the two students called Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold, but we understand quickly that this is pretty much the same thing that probably happened..
This movie is made under the pretense that we are actually watching tapes shot by Andre Kriegman and Calvin Gabriel themselves using a home camera that Andre received for his birthday, to documente how the plan came to be, how it was prepared, and most importantly.. why. The two students recorded every step of their plan for about year, leading to the very final minutes before the attack as they load their guns, leave the camera on the car's dash, and walk to the school. The actual attack is shown by "footage" of several security cameras with 911 calls as the audio.
Nicknaming themselve 'The Army Of Two', they speak directly to the camera, talking about how they feel, their motivations and their extreme delusion. Much like Harris and Klebold; they were victims of harassement thru their highschool career, and now, they finally want to take revenge. They even compare themselves to samurais -- they can only find truth in death and they want their sacrifice to be a wake up call to America; too many students are victims to harassements in highschool and just nobody wants to really help them. They hope that what they will do will be a warning for people to stop making fun of others.
They document how they acquired their weapons, how they made the pipebombs, and want to make sure that people understand that they acted alone, under full understand of what they were going to do. They regret having to kill people, but somehow think that their sacrifices will be understandable for their so-called cause. The movie is also intercut with random segments of videos -- each of the two boys with their family, Cal's birthday party when he was a kid, Andre's dad picking him up for work the day before the attack, trying to have a serious father-son conversation with him about life, about how he is proud that his son was gonna go to college and maybe finally be able to finishing paying for his damn car. That scene is really emotional since we are aware of what's going to happen the day after..
They address their family several times thru the camera, asking them to forgive them, and to not freak out and not to blame themselves for what they were planning to do. It was their plan, At one point, Andre mentions how the medias were going to try blame everything, movies, cds; "they are going to examine and go through everything we had, and blame our copy of Mortal Kombat, for fuck's sake". How they were going to try to find a leader and say that the other was just a follower; how they were going to distord what happened to sell more copies. They even go as far as destroy all their 'earthly possessions' in a big bon fire the night before the attack.
As time passes though, we start to feel that Andre is indeed the boss, and that Cal is just trying to convince himself that he also wants to do it. His girl friend tries to make him
realise how different he is when he's with Andre, and how much weird Andre is. When Cal talks to Andre about her, Andre makes fun of Cal for even bothering with her and how much of a bitch she is to say things like that, and what the fuck is her problem and how the Zero Day plan was more important
What they did was unforgiveable, that's a given, but I felt that this movie tried to give a more human side to killer, and helps understand (and of course, I'll never approve what they did, it was terribly stupid and evil) a bit more why they did. Don't get me wrong, Harris and Klebold deserve to burn in hell for what they did; but I really liked how Zero Day tried not to demonize them like most movies tried to, but to show us the human side of the story that we never really saw before. They were just two regular kids who randomly met, and found out that they both wanted to take revenge.
This movie was very well done, I really liked how it felt 'real', the acting was very natural, and you actually started caring (to a certain degree) about them, and especially about their families and friends. As they wanted to make some sort of millitary style documentary on their plans, it's pretyt neat how they sometime fuck up and restart whatever they were trying to shoot, just like it was a highschool presentation.. The massacre scene was pretty hardcore, with the audio of the 911 operator trying to talk to them thru the cell phone they found on a girl they shot. We hear them laughing at people as they randomly shot them and made them plea for their lives. One of most powerful scene I've seen in my movie watching career. I really recommend it, it's certainly one of the best movie i've seen in years. 9/10
Go rent it this weekend!
