127 Hours Review

There was a part of me watching 127 Hours that struggled to sympathise with its protagonist Aron Ralston. "It'll take more than a 6 day desperate fight for survival with your arm trapped underneath a boulder culminating in you cutting that arm off, to impress me" I said to myself as I munched my popcorn and guzzled my coke zero. True, the most dangerous thing I'd done that week was to walk 50 yards down from the clearly marked zebra crossing only to then cross the road anyway, laughing in the face of danger and oncoming traffic as I thought to myself, Aron WHO? In all seriousness though, the problem is that, at the start of the film Aron is presented as, well, a bit of a dick. He doesn't tell anyone where he's going when he sets off into the Utah wilderness. Why not? Because he's Aron Ralston and he doesn't need to, that's why not. Pestering phonecalls from his family? No time for those! Clearly this is the deliberate set up for the "spiritual journey" our character will go on in the course of his crisis but it's a risky ploy as the danger is in alienating the audience. One assumes this is the way the real Ralston was in real life but since when have the movies let the truth get in the way of a good story? It's therefore credit to co-screenwriter and director Danny Boyle, as well as the charm and likability of James Franco, that the film is as engaging as it is.

Boyle the director, employs many of his now familiar techniques (odd camera angles, split-screen, thumping soundtrack) to infuse the film with energy and vibrancy. This works in the early scenes as we watch Ralston bask in the adventure of the outdoors as well as after he falls into the rock crevice and becomes trapped where these techniques distract us from the static, single location. Whilst immobile, Ralston uses every bit of his common sense and knowledge of the outdoors to extricate himself from what instantly appears to be a hopeless situation. The best thing about the film for me was the way, what are normally small things, take on massive, life or death consequences in the context of Aron's predicament. Frequently we enter our protagonist's head and watch him think back to regrets he has about his past as well as to consider a future he may never have. This kind of thing can often feel like filler but in this it genuinely works to up the emotional stakes of the film. By the time he makes the impossible decision to amputate the trapped arm and free himself, you absolutely feel not only his desperation, but also his sheer willpower, mental strength and desire to live. The amputation scene is predictably grim but not gratuitous. Danny Boyle has never been one to shy away from any violence in his stories and this could have been close to unwatchable. Instead convincing sound effects, tremendous acting from James Franco and a few choice shots, sell the horror of what he is forced to do.

I have an odd relationship with Danny Boyle's films. I tend to admire them more than I genuinely like them. 127 Hours continues this trend insofar as I can't imagine returning to it very often but I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would and it's definitely worth your time.

7/10