127 Hours – Movie Review

Director Danny Boyle's much-hyped movie 127 Hours, which was released on November 12, 2010 in US, has hit the screens in India yesterday ( January 26). The Hollywood thriller has got positive review from 93% critics in US. James Franco's performance has received lots of appreciation from them. Moreover, the movie has snatched several nominations in Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe awards in the categories like best story, best screenplay, best actor and best music. It is a bravura piece of film-making that captures the resilience of the human spirit. Truly! It deserves all these awards.

The film 127 Hours is an action movie with a guy, who cannot move. It is movie made on real-life incident of Aron Ralston and is an adaptation of Ralston's book 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place' James Franco's acting is the main attraction of the movie. AR Rahman music score, breath-taking cinematography and excellent storyline are its other highlights.

When most of the Hollywood deals with imaginary science fiction, Danny Boyle can not stop himself from making movies on real incidents. In his previous, the director has heavily focused on physical pain, mental paranoia and personal treachery faced by the hero. Now, he has returned with a same subject in 127 Hours too.

The movie is all about mountain climber Aron Ralston, whose remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crushes his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Canyonlands National Park of Utah. Director Danny Boyle re-creates this true story of survival with incredible brio. By using flashbacks, hallucinations and kinetic editing, Boyle transforms a necessarily static situation into a collage in which we get to see a man pondering his imminent demise and discovering whether he has what it takes to save himself.

Aron Ralston (James Franco), a mountain climber, embarks on a wilderness jaunt in a Utah national park without informing anyone where he was going. After a frenetic couple of hours on a mountain bike, he continues on foot and meets Megan (Amber Tamblyn) and Kristi (Kate Mara), who are lost. But in a freak accident, he is literally stuck between a rock and a hard place trapped by his forearm between a boulder and a cliff-face. Over the five six days, with no sign of rescue and his water having run out, the brutal solution to his ghastly predicament became increasingly clear.

Promising actor James Franco has delivered a hair raising performance that matches Danny Boyle's technical brilliance with a mesmerising depiction of Ralston's strange internal journey. AR Rahman's music has also boosted the strength of Boyle's gory conclusion. The amputation scene is the handiwork of makeup artist Tony Gardner and his team. It is made with medically accurate in every minute detail. Multiple cameras are used to shoot the entire scene. Camerawork is really excellent in this scene.

All in all, 127 Hours has neither a message, nor a metaphorical meaning. It just deals with terrible story of Aron Ralston's magnificent survival. But it is an exciting, touching and visually compelling film.

Producer: Christian Colson, John Smithson, Danny Boyle, Sharan Kapoor

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Clemence Poesy, Lizzy Caplan, Treat Williams, Kate Burton

Music: AR Rahman

Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak