127 Hours: Review

127 Hours is a film about a man, stuck with one arm crushed under a rock, with only himself and a camera for company. On top of that, the audience knows the outcome; in short, it's something of an ambitious project. That said, if there's any director working today with the innovation and adaptability to pull it off, it's Danny Boyle. Never one to rest on his laurels, Boyle's output has genre-hopped immensely, with only his two first films, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting sharing any common ground; certainly the Utah desert is literally and figuratively a far-cry from the grimy Glaswegian suburbs in which Boyle made his name.

How then, to generate suspense in a film with a widely publicised outcome, namely self-amputation? By highly publicising said self-amputation of course, highlighting the grim detail of the severance. I recall Graham Norton asking of Boyle: 'Couldn't you have done it with a wide-angle?' We know it's coming, but we dread it, slowly cranking up the tension as the days grind past. It worked wonderfully, and I found myself urging him to stop chipping away at the rock with his ever-blunting knife.

A film so entirely focused on one man needs a great performance from a great actor, and James Franco almost fits that role sublimely. I say almost, because despite his instantly believable persona as a rugged canyoneerer and excellent depiction of his psychological difficulties, physically his performance isn't quite right. Now, clearly I have no concept of what it would be like to be stuck with a crushed arm for five-and-a-half days, but he just doesn't seem to be in that much pain, nor does he appear to weaken overly. Despite presumably monumental de-hydration and starvation, not to mention the missing appendage, he seems oddly okay at the end. It doesn't quite sit right.

Boyle and Franco do, however, an excellent job in creating a deteriorating mind, with the hallucinatory monsoon, his relationships now assumed to be forever passed and his coming to terms with his own lifestyle choices that led him to where he finds himself. Contrasting water- and freedom-based motifs before and after the accident work well in accentuating his lack of both, which comes across clearly in Franco's performance.

I think directors should be given credit for attempting ambitious projects, and with, perhaps, just Phone Booth and Buried as reference points, Boyle pulls it off yet again. It's not perfect, it's not always an easy watch, but it nevertheless is one you will remember.

4/5