Seems is the operative word. Wood (almost 27), whose still-boyish face and enormous blue eyes jump out of the screen, portrays a nervous young man who eventually reveals a fear far deeper than fighting in a war. Strangely enough, the movie has comical moments, which are effortlessly woven into the action and mostly involve Wood's character.

Former Brat Packer Ally Sheedy (looking good after all these years) makes an appearance as Feller's unethically disengaged psychiatrist of seven years, who does crossword puzzles, reads magazines, and paints her fingernails during their sessions.

"What if they don't like me," asks the anxiety-ridden Feller. "I'll bet the first ones to die are the ones that nobody likes. I feel like I'm one of those guys."

Her response? She writes him a prescription for sleeping pills and says, "You don't need a psychiatrist, Aaron. Just be yourself." Okay. She could have saved him a lot of money if she'd told him that seven years ago.

Day Zero is better than I expected, although I thought the men were an unlikely trio. They seemed too different to have retained such a long friendship. The haunting soundtrack was appropriate for the story; the retro songs (and Wood's sideburns) gave me the impression I was watching a Vietnam War-era movie.

Whether one is for, against, or indifferent to the Iraq war, there's something in the movie for everyone. According to Anthony Moody, a producer on the film, that process was deliberate. "[W]e didn't make a political film in the traditional sense which, to me, is one that takes a biased stance and attempts to persuade the audience to its argument," he wrote on LewRockwell.com. Moody said that he, screenwriter Robert Malkani, and director Bryan Gunnar Cole are "in no particular order... a liberal, a conservative, and a centrist."

Day Zero goes beyond the rhetoric of war and exposes how men's own convictions disrupt and interrupt their lives.