Film: 127 Hours

GENRE: Drama
RATING: R for language and disturbing violent content
RUNTIME: 1hour and 34 minutes
STARRING: James Franco (Spiderman,Milk)
DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting)
WRITERS: Danny Boyle (newcomer) & Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire,Trainspotting)
PLOT: A mountain climber is trapped under a boulder while canyoneering. Long story short, he has to cut his arm off to survive. Based on a true story.

FIVE OBSERVATIONS:
1 Tom Hanks and Will Smith know how to carry a movie on their shoulders (Castaway & I Am Legend), now so does James Franco. The other two got to move around, Franco is pinned down . . . literally. Franco delivers an amazing performance as Aron Ralston, who got himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. He is wild and flaky as well as sympathetic and vulnerable. An Oscar nomination is inevitable but he’ll probably still lose to Colin Firth.
2 Danny Boyle it a master at eye-catching visuals. The beauty of the landscape and sky, the dreamlike creative hallucinations, the raw physical grittiness of being in the moment, Boyle deftly captures it all. To top it all off, he makes great use of a triptych split screen to kickstart his film with maximum energy. Stunning work.
3 Of course the plot is pretty simple. Guy is trapped and needs to escape somehow. But it’s the psychological nature of the story that triumphs. Going through Ralston’s thought process of how to escape to his realizations of how he has treated others is very well crafted. I was completely engaged.
4 Of course, everyone wants to know about the cutting off the arm scene. I won’t lie to you; it was a brutal three minutes. Hard to watch. Pretty bloody. However, I cringed more at the nail sequences in Black Swan; probably because the nail thing could happen whereas I doubt I’ll be in a similar canyoneering situation. But it’s only three minutes. There’s still 91 minutes of great cinema.
5 If this film has taught me anything, it’s to leave a note saying where you are.

RECOMMENDATION: See it in theatre, if brave. Otherwise DVD.
UPCOMING REVIEWS: Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader