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January and February have often been seen as dumping grounds for film distributors, a time to release products that actively embarrass movie studios.
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the eye-scalding atrocities “Just Go With It” and “The Eagle,” and audiences have been hard-up for quality entertainment.
The silver lining comes in the form of DVD releases of the small films that get plenty of awards attention but don’t often come to our secluded neck of the woods. The first of these endeavors is Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours,” his follow up to the universally beloved “Slumdog Millionaire.”
After “Slumdog,” Boyle was given the golden ticket that so many auteurs crave, a free pass to make anything you want. Boyle chose to work with the true story of Aron Ralston, the adventurer who spent five days with his arm pinned under a giant boulder after a mountain climbing mishap.
The story was so ubiquitous that everyone knows how it ends: Ralston, desperate to survive, uses a pocket knife and sheer will to amputate his arm, freeing him from certain death.
The smartest move the film version makes is putting the choice to sever one’s arm into proper context. A weaker filmmaker would make it into a bold statement, something we admire the character for, and wonder if we ourselves would be capable of doing the same thing. Boyle frames it differently.
The film acts as a love letter to human spirit and tenacity. When Ralston begins the painful process of freeing himself, viewers can only nod in agreement.
The film rests squarely on James Franco’s shoulders. He performs most of the film in one location, playing off only himself. There are a few hallucinatory moments toward the end, providing other actors to help balance him out, but Franco is electrifying all on his own.
It’s a huge gamble for any actor to play by himself for over an hour — for every brilliant “Castaway” there’s an equally misguided “Buried.” “127 Hours” is, thankfully, more akin to the former.
Shot with Boyle’s near trademark frenetic style, the movie goes by much quicker than the running time suggests. Boyle is a chameleon of a filmmaker, jumping genres between films and leaving an individual fingerprint on each outing. This ranks highly in his oeuvre, somewhere above “Sunshine” and “28 Days Later,” but just under “Trainspotting” and “Slumdog.”
As a visceral experience, “127 Hours” is an adrenaline rush like no other. There have been several reports of audience members fainting or retching during the film’s climax; so many that pundits began to wonder if marketers staged these incidents. The studio even capitalized on this fact, crafting “I Survived 127 Hours” T-shirts.
After finishing the film, I felt as though I deserved one too. Boyle doesn’t amble around the inevitable: It’s a story about a man severing his own arm, and we see it in shocking detail. Those with weak constitutions may want to skip this one, or at least cover their eyes.
Grade: A
