127 Hours (Boyle, 2010)

[animatedude]

no posters here  yet..nothing i have noticed...not that i care to be honest.the whole man climbing on the mountains thing put me off.

when i was a kid, i went camping with the school...suddenly the teacher asked us to climb this mountain.i thought he was kidding until the students started climbing.i couldn't say no as we had to get to the other side.to this day i don't know how i climbed that mountain.a near death experience i will never ever forget..

[ozzylogic]

'Bloody' excellent, gritty, awesome! He should get nominated! 4.5/5

[fizz]

The characters in a Danny Boyle film always find ways to beat increasing odds. From Shallow Grave and Trainspotting to 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire, his protagonists rise from what is sure failure out of sheer determination and their own internal tenacity. 127 Hours, a film about the true story of adventurer Aron Ralston and his fight for survival while trapped under a boulder in the mountains of Utah, can therefore be considered the prototypical Boyle film.

Aron is played with disarming charm and wit by James Franco, whose ability to carry the entire 94 minute film almost single handedly is the real draw. Recalling the challenging work of Tom Hanks in Castaway, Franco remains engaging for viewers while being pinned to a large rock. His work is made slightly easier by Boyle’s visual energy. His kinetic camera work, always a joy to watch in the jigsaw puzzle like way it splits screens, time and memory within the film, is quite brilliant. It seems there is no place Boyle cannot take his camera and here he finds ways to show us the inside of bottles, claustrophobic canyons, video cameras tape heads and even the human flesh during key moments.

Despite all of this, 127 Hours is really Franco’s showpiece. So involving are his many failed attempts at dislodging the boulder that any close calls were greeted by audience ‘ooh’s’ and ‘aah’s’ during the screening I attended. When chipping the chunk of rock one piece as a time using a pocket knife fails, Aron tries to lift it using a pulley made from climbing rope and his own weight pushing against it. When all else fails, and with time and water supplies almost out, he is left with one last resort, and the film recreates this in sufficient detail. In this, 127 Hours can almost be considered a cinematic sibling to Kevin MacDonald documentary Touching the Void, a film it has a lot in common with, including some surreal imagery where the mind starts to play tricks when the surroundings gets cold, dark and lonely. Boyle largely avoids any cheap shots at gaining audience sympathy and the film benefits by not being manipulative in the way his Slumdog Millionaire was. In the end however, it is thanks to Franco’s dynamic performance that we can’t help but want Aron’s persistence to be rewarded with freedom, because it has been earned.

Rating: 4/5

[ayaa1977]

Franco and Boyle are da man! First let's start with my man Boyle, after Slumdog Millionaire, he could have used his cashe' and scored a +$100 millions action summer popcorn franchise or something really big, but what did he choose; a small budget crazy survival story that was a hard sell and probably no studio would have agreed touch. Then he made a grim story of a guy trapped between a rock and a hard place into a very entertaining and engaging film that, in spite of its subject, was lighthearted and at time genuinely funny too. As for Franco, he is really phenomenal here. This cool dude, who if you remember it well was hamming it in the Spiderman franchise, turns out in my opinion the best leading performance of the year, and I am saying that after seeing Colin Firth in The King's Speech. 127 Hours is one of the best films of the year, a crowd pleaser and should be seen by anyone who love cinema.

My Rating 4.5/5

[shariqq]

127 Hours
Danny Boyle | U.S.A. | 2010
95 min

Among the best of contemporary film directors, Danny Boyle brings his visual energy and heroism theme to 127 Hours with renewed fervor. Inspired by true events, the movie is about one man’s 127 hour ordeal of being stuck in a remote canyon crevice with his right-arm trapped under a boulder. With only a few tools and objects at hand, and water to last him a few days, Aron Ralston (James Franco) prepares for the worst and records messages on his handy-cam for his parents. Using the real Aron Ralston recordings as inspiration, Franco and Boyle recreate his time of tribulation, yet make it entertaining enough for a good mainstream movie. While we have seen better work from Boyle, this is James Franco’s tour-de-force. The screen belongs to him, and he carries it through splendidly.

My Rating --> 3.5 of 5

[fizz]

Releases on the 3rd of Feb 2011.

[madali]

127 Hours (Boyle, 2010)

"You know, I've been thinking. Everything is... just comes together. It's me. I chose this. I chose all this. This rock... this rock has been waiting for me my entire life. It's entire life, ever since it was a bit of meteorite a million, billion years ago. In space. It's been waiting, to come here. Right, right here. I've been moving towards it my entire life. The minute I was born, every breath that I've taken, every action has been leading me to this crack on the out surface."

Life is strange. There are moments in it that can change your life forever. It doesn’t matter what you do, how you plan your life, all it takes is a second of unplanned event to derail your whole life.

In “127 Hours”, it is that one unplanned moment. As our mountain climbing, mountain dew drinking young man continues through another of his adventures, one of life’s surprises occurs. A rock slips and they both fall, boulder and man, and they interconnect. Rock smashes on man’s hand and he is stuck in a valley deep inside the canyons. Nature overpowering man, not through will or show of strength, but through lack of interest. The man is stuck, unable to move, and it has nothing to do with how good or bad he has been in his life, nothing to do with his thoughts and desires, nothing to do with his devotion or lack of to God, the events that occur does not have any sense of love or hate towards the man it has trapped, to it, to Nature, it could have been a raven, a lizard, a planet, or another rock.

We watch the man’s struggle to free himself from the rock and it is an interesting and at times difficult watch, but this is not a hero’s movie and his struggle is not a brave struggle, it is stripping man at its most basic. He needs to survive and his actions is what removes all the layers that exist in this world and all the pretense and illusions we have created for ourselves. The truth is that we are survivors, like all the other life forces in this planet and probably others, it is what we do, we survive, or at least, try to. In this story, the attempt succeeds.

4/5

[ayaa1977]

Bravo Mad! That is an excellent observational review. I picture you like Tommy Lee Jones's Sheriff in No Country for Old Men reciting his deep and profound thoughts about the human condition. That would be a ticket I am willing to pay for in advanced.

[theoddball]

I wanted the Academy to give the Oscar to Franco, but the Academy is a bunch of pussies and once again went with the politically correct option. Cunts.

Mad, that's my favourite concise review in a while. Spoke my mind. Respect.

[madali]

*fist bump*