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The 24th Day

Review by Peter Nastasi
PeterNastasi@TheCinemaSource.com

24th Day is a low-budget thriller, written and directed by Tony Piccirillo, starring James Marsden as Dan and Scott Speedman as Tom. After going home with Tom one night, Dan slowly begins to remember that he has been in the apartment before (but not that he had sex with Tom), and eventually Tom reveals that they had a casual encounter five years back. At first Tom seems like a jilted, obsessed lover getting his revenge for being forgotten, but we soon realize that his reasons for trapping Dan in his apartment as his hostage are much more serious. Tom discovered 24 days ago that he is HIV+, and he blames Dan—the only man (he claims) he has slept with. After taking a blood sample from Dan, Tom informs him that he is having the sample tested, and if the test comes back positive, he will murder Dan. What follows is an interesting volley of ideas more relevant to (and honest about) our culture’s sexual climate than most films dare to be.

Unfortunately, the writing becomes too expository and unrealistic at times. Mr. Piccirillo’s ideas are interesting, but I want to see them happen through dramatic action rather than have them told to me in didactic monologue. I enjoyed that the film addresses certain issues: gay men who say they are ‘safe’ but in reality take less precautions than they probably should; married ‘straight’ men who cheat on their wives with other men but want to live the hetero-normative role carved out for them by American society. Yet the strength of these ideas is often undercut by how they are delivered.

Considering that the film takes place in such a limited setting, I commend Tony Piccirillo for creating a piece that never becomes tired. James Marsden and Scott Speedman put in good performances, and while I scrutinized their acting for flaws, I was hard-pressed to find any problems. I have to admit that while I may have found problems with the script, the actors handle it well enough that I didn’t dwell on this. One thing that did bother me was the jump-cut editing. I felt it was unnecessary. The story has enough tension inherent in it, and the actors are interesting enough to watch, that the editor shouldn’t have felt the need to resort to the overuse of jump-cuts. The least effective parts of the film are the flashback sequences, which are shot in bleached out tones and accompanied by dissonant, shrieking music. These scenes came off like cheesy reenactments to me. Interestingly, 24th Day was a play before it was a movie, and I want to know how Mr. Piccirillo handled the back-story on stage.

In the end, it isn’t really clear who we should ...