127 Hours

You see, I always knew that physical exercise was a gangrenous game, and so had little sympathy with Aron Ralston (James Franco) when he dons a rucksack and heads off into the rocky desert for an hike. Along the way he takes some photographs, meets a couple of young ladies for a swim in a beautifully pristine blue grotto and then slips and falls down a crevasse where his arm becomes wedged by a fallen boulder. Try as he might, he cannot free himself and even resorts to trying to saw his own arm off - with a pen knife not a chainsaw, but with supplies running low and the baking heat during the day and chilly nights taking their toll, you have to wonder if the man has any chance of escaping at all. Franco and a growing sense of claustrophobia work well here as the man uses all his wits and survival instincts. The photography is astonishingly intimate, without ever giving us even the smallest hint as to where the camera is as it gets us into the thick of his nasty predicament. The dialogue isn’t the most important element here, but even what little there is works quite poignantly as records a video diary of his travails as he slowly loses the plot. It’s based on a true story, so maybe jeopardy isn’t its strongest point, either, but it’s still quite a fascinating look at just how weak and feeble man(kind) is when exposed to an unforgiving nature and the elements. Worth a look, but it’s not an easy film to watch at times: desperate times and all that.

watch it at like 11yo.. ngl I had some scoobie-doo nightmare for a while (iykyk) but I otherwise enjoyed the movie a lot ! was scarred it would be the same stuff over and over but the in depth flashbacks doesn't allow this

I can certainly appreciate the lengths that those involved in _127 Hours_ went to. Being that the movie is 90% bottle-episode, wherein the lead doesn't even have the luxury of something as simple as being allowed to pace about, it's not unfair to say that _127 Hours_ doesn't have a whole lot going on. To try and inject a bit of life into it, director Danny Boyle throws in a number of unique filming styles, and I'll absolutely give props to him for that outside-the-box sort of thinking, but it doesn't actually change the fact that there's still not a whole lot going on. Franco is not a bad actor, but it's a big ask of someone to run something like this solo, and it ends up being a bigger one than he can fully manage. _127 Hours_ is not something I ever found fully engaging. Oft-intense, and kind of gross, but not fully engaging. _Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._