The story of Aron Ralston is as harrowing as anything that could be written by the best screenwriter in the entire world. Ralston, a loner-type with a yen for extreme adventure, found himself while canyoneering in Canyonlands National Park, trapped in a crack with a boulder crushing his arm. For the next five days Ralston fought insanity, thirst, and hunger while desperately attempting to free himself. In the end, Ralston was forced to cut his own arm with a cheap multi-use tool and then walk ten miles back to civilization.
Quite honestly,
Danny Boyle doesn’t have to do much to make this an
interesting film. More so Danny Boyle can’t do that much
with this film, the story barely lends itself to even the
slightest of change. Ralston (realistically portrayed by
prolific actor James Franco) is stuck in a canyon crack with
a rock on his arm and for an hour and half (the condensed
127 hours of the title) goes through every range of emotion
and memory as he attempts and fails to free himself. Boyle
literally places a camera in front of Franco and watches him
come apart. Boyle does good work alleviating the weighty
nature of the film with flashes of friends and family
Ralston begins to hallucinate as the days weigh on, but
truly, this is Franco’s film. And he absolutely dominates
it. This is a fully fledged character, a flawed, funny,
social-outsider who believes entirely in his ability to
accomplish everything with out the help of others. When
Ralston becomes trapped, literally pinned down, by himself,
this idea quickly breaks down. Franco does a brilliant job of
bringing these emotions to the forefront. What begins as
desperate disbelief turns to straight desperation and then
sadness and then lunacy and then survival, and with just a
camera to speak to, Franco embodies all of this.
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