 |
|
127 Hours - A film by Danny Boyle |
It’s not about the arm. Well, essentially, Danny Boyle’s new offering really is about the arm, but it’s got more to it, honest. Based on the true story of Aron Ralston, adrenaline junkie and canyoneer, 127 Hours portrays a fun day out for our ill-fated hero (ladies, jumping into pools of water, biking about really fast), followed by the, you guessed it, 127 hours he spends with his arm lodged against a huge feck off boulder.
Boyle goes about the film in his usual happy macabre style, injecting humour and his trademark shocks - plus his typical brand slutting; hello PepsiCo, Budweiser and Canon. Seeing as it was Boyle’s first foray into fact based movies and the whole thing is basically about some bloke in a crevice, alone, for five days, he’s done superbly, getting the script to run well and keeping it from becoming tedious with some well placed hallucinations that both give you a sense of how Aron’s mental state is deteriorating and providing a respite from being crammed down the hole with him. The score, like with all Boyle films, was to a high standard with Bill Withers’ Perfect Day acting as backing to Ralston’s despair and fruitless escape attempts - a stroke of genius. The camerawork is well thought out, going from claustrophobic shots to panoramic ones enabling you to fully appreciate the hopelessness of the situation, while planning your own trip to the Grand Canyon (with a good knife/satellite phone/couple of hundred litres of liquid that isn’t your own piss).
But let’s face it, the knife scene is what has gotten everyone’s attention and rightly so, it’s a bit minging, to say the least. Boyle uses POV shots to really make you feel in the action so that every cut - made with a blade the kids on the Forest would laugh at- is right there, up close for you to see and hear. I’m not a squeamish lass, but even I gagged at the sight of Franco ripping through a tendon. Still, the scene is mercifully short, so I retained my grip on my dinner. Just.
Boyle goes about the film in his usual happy macabre style, injecting humour and his trademark shocks - plus his typical brand slutting; hello PepsiCo, Budweiser and Canon. Seeing as it was Boyle’s first foray into fact based movies and the whole thing is basically about some bloke in a crevice, alone, for five days, he’s done superbly, getting the script to run well and keeping it from becoming tedious with some well placed hallucinations that both give you a sense of how Aron’s mental state is deteriorating and providing a respite from being crammed down the hole with him. The score, like with all Boyle films, was to a high standard with Bill Withers’ Perfect Day acting as backing to Ralston’s despair and fruitless escape attempts - a stroke of genius. The camerawork is well thought out, going from claustrophobic shots to panoramic ones enabling you to fully appreciate the hopelessness of the situation, while planning your own trip to the Grand Canyon (with a good knife/satellite phone/couple of hundred litres of liquid that isn’t your own piss).
But let’s face it, the knife scene is what has gotten everyone’s attention and rightly so, it’s a bit minging, to say the least. Boyle uses POV shots to really make you feel in the action so that every cut - made with a blade the kids on the Forest would laugh at- is right there, up close for you to see and hear. I’m not a squeamish lass, but even I gagged at the sight of Franco ripping through a tendon. Still, the scene is mercifully short, so I retained my grip on my dinner. Just.
 |
|
127 Hours - Starring James Franco, Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn |
James Franco, who plays Ralston, impressed me once more with his adaptability. The guy can play comic, dramatic and historic with equal zest and it doesn’t hurt that he’s pretty easy on the eyes either. He showed admirable skill at switching from happy, carefree mentalist to shocked, stumped (‘scuse the pun) and despairing – you could tell the guy had done his research. Franco manages to work well with Boyle’s script, giving it life when a lesser actor could have allowed the movie to seem a bit dead in places, which would have given us more than enough cause to get bored of his plight.
I went into the film expecting to find Ralston a bit of an idiot to be honest (as rumour has it that he is). However when he speaks to the camera about his stupidity at loping off into the desert without bothering to tell anyone, and his reasoning behind this and acceptance that he’d made a monumental cock-up made me want to cuff him ‘round the ear and tell him not to do it again, but then, you know, give him a little cuddle to let him know it wasn’t all bad. I found Aron’s vision of his future son a bit contrived, I’ll admit, and my buddy reckoned he should have hacked off the offending limb around the 100 hour mark (to be fair, he knew it was going to be a goner anyway, just saved himself paying more for the hospital bill, didn’t he?) but all in all, another excellent all rounder from Boyle, delivering exactly what you expect and more. Keep up the good work, mate, you show that Spielberg fella what a Brit can do.
127 Hours will be showing at Broadway until Thursday 3 February 2011.
Official 127 Hours website
I went into the film expecting to find Ralston a bit of an idiot to be honest (as rumour has it that he is). However when he speaks to the camera about his stupidity at loping off into the desert without bothering to tell anyone, and his reasoning behind this and acceptance that he’d made a monumental cock-up made me want to cuff him ‘round the ear and tell him not to do it again, but then, you know, give him a little cuddle to let him know it wasn’t all bad. I found Aron’s vision of his future son a bit contrived, I’ll admit, and my buddy reckoned he should have hacked off the offending limb around the 100 hour mark (to be fair, he knew it was going to be a goner anyway, just saved himself paying more for the hospital bill, didn’t he?) but all in all, another excellent all rounder from Boyle, delivering exactly what you expect and more. Keep up the good work, mate, you show that Spielberg fella what a Brit can do.
127 Hours will be showing at Broadway until Thursday 3 February 2011.
Official 127 Hours website
Read comments and make your own
Comments