127 Hours **** (2010, James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn – Classic Movie Review 3348

Courage and the life-force personified, James Franco is quite brilliant in an extraordinary, virtually solo Oscar-nominated tour-de-force as real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston who gets trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone and mobile-less near Moab, Utah. He didn’t take a cell phone with him!

As the hours and days tick by, his situation gets grimmer and grimmer, and he starts ruminating about his life in particular and the world in general…

127 Hours (2010) is a bit of a triumphant work of art. Although it’s almost all set in just the one location, it is utterly cinematic. And it is incredibly imaginatively filmed by director Danny Boyle in his first movie since his Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008), succeeding in making the movie uniquely inventive and dynamic.

The bloody arm-hacking is a bit grim – so you may want to close your eyes, though, with hacking sounds only, this might make it even worse.

It swung six Oscar nominations, including Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Original Song (‘If I Rise’). But this time there were no wins.

However, the American Film Institue voted it Movie of the Year, saying: ‘127 Hours is a breathtaking, pulse-pounding journey into the mind of a man lost and alone. James Franco’s bravura performance drives this gripping true story of a young adventurer whose will to live in the most unsettling of circumstances proves a triumph of sacrifice. That a fast-paced, expansive film is found at the bottom of a claustrophobic crevice is a tribute to director Danny Boyle’s inventive mind and cements his stature as one of the world’s most exciting film-makers. 127 Hours will echo for years like cries from a red rock canyon, reminding of the power of cinema to set us free.’

Clémence Poésy (as Rana), Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn (as the two hikers Aron meets before his accident), Sean Bott (as Aron’s friend) and Kate Burton and Treat Williams (as Aron’s mom and dad) appear briefly.

The screenplay by Boyle and Simon Beaufoy is based on Aron’s autobiography.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3348

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