127 Hours

Spending 93 minutes watching someone squirm in agonising pain attempting to escape a horrifically slow death may not sound like a lot of fun, yet director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) has claimed that, amongst other things, 127 Hours is an uplifting and enthralling tale of courage and survival. So, armed with this knowledge and the delicious rumours that people had fainted and been carried out of screenings, I ventured forth into Aron Ralston’s rocky world.

The title of Aron Ralston’s source novel Between a Rock and a Hard Place essentially sums up the plot. Ralston is rock climbing adventurer who had his arm trapped under a boulder in the middle of nowhere for 127 Hours, with the film documenting his torment and his attempts to escape, before eventually slicing off the offending limb. The film is therefore quite constrained and we stay with the character throughout, making it seem rather similar to last year’s dark and claustrophobic shocker Buried, a film that to all intents and purposes was Ryan Reynolds stuck in a box for 95 minutes. The films do vary, however. Buried succeeds in never leaving the coffin and creating a brutally tense and dark world to provide an entertaining thriller. In 127 Hours, meanwhile, we have wild flights of fantasy enabling the audience to get right to the heart of its protagonist and witness the effects the ordeal has upon him. This marks out its own territory and creates its own visual style, whilst presenting a rich back-story enabling us to invest in the character and give the film the necessary power, as well as creating a strange spiritual journal that is the film's core, bringing about a sort of uplifting message. However, the process here stumbles, and essentially works well but not brilliantly.

On a technical level, the film is excellent and brilliantly shot, the sound track is very good and, unsurprisingly, Danny Boyle directs it incredibly well with great style and imagination. James Franco gives an excellent performance as Aron Ralston, whose anguished cries really do seem authentic and have a weight to them, providing a distinct sense of physicality. The problem with this is that, considering the film expects the audience to know the outcome on entry, this all becomes a little tiring. As after a while, you cannot help but wonder just when and how they are going to show his eventual escape. This scene works surprisingly well: despite using limited blood and gore, it has a real sense of pain and torment nonetheless, by relying primarily upon depth of character developed by Franco’s excellent performance alongside pitch perfect sound design to create the effect. It seems strange to me that it has caused fainting, however.

127 Hours is a bold and adventurous film that for the most part works very well but falls flat on a few hurdles, yet this certainly does not stop it being moving, exciting and, at times, a nerve shredding experience.

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