Oscar winning director Danny Boyle's latest film, "127 Hours," is based on the true-life adventure of a hiker who took drastic measures to survive. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly Magazine filed the following review.
The film "127 Hours" is a true-life adventure that turns into a one-man disaster movie -- and the darker it gets, the more enthralling it becomes. The director, Danny Boyle, is the floridly intense pop-poetic stylist who made "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Trainspotting," but here, in a change of pace, he summons all his visual zap to tell the story of what happened to Aron Ralston, a 27-year-old hiker, as authentically as possible.
On a Friday night in April 2003, Aron, a carefree bohemian jock played by James Franco, leaves his home in Aspen to indulge in his favorite ritual of escape, driving out to the miles of twisty red-rock formations that make up Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Hiking on his own, he falls through a crack in the earth and winds up wedged between two chalkstone walls, a boulder having lodged itself against his crushed right arm.
You may go into "127 Hours" knowing exactly what Aron Ralston did to survive. Yet in no way does that diminish the film's psychological suspense. Franco, in a tour de force, takes us through the Five Stages of Survival: detachment, jokes, rage, revelation, and doing-what-you-gotta-do. Once Aron realizes that he's not getting (or going) anywhere, he begins to descend into fantasy. And what he comes to see is that his trapped state is what he's been running from his whole life. That boulder was waiting for him.
The film offers a daunting challenge to a filmmaker: How do you rivet an audience when your protagonist can't even move? The answer is that there's an awesome freedom to Danny Boyle's filmmaking; he treats Aron’s predicament as a kind of altered state. Aron may be pinned, but his soul gets unlocked, and when he finally faces up to what he has to do, he's not just cutting off his trapped appendage. He's cutting off the part of himself that was only pretending to be alive.
"127 Hours" is a salute to do-it-yourself existential bravery, but what makes it cathartic is that it's about a guy who gets high by taking the ultimate plunge.
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