127 Hours is an action movie with a guy, who cannot move. It is movie made on real-life incident of Aron Ralston and is an adaptation of Ralston’s book’Between a Rock and a Hard Place’ James Franco’s acting is the main attraction of the movie. AR Rahman music score, breath-taking cinematography and excellent storyline are its other highlights.
When most of the Hollywood deals with imaginary science fiction, Danny Boyle can not stop himself from making movies on real incidents. The movie is all about mountain climber Aron Ralston, whose remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crushes his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Canyonlands National Park of Utah. Director Danny Boyle re-creates this true story of survival with incredible brio. By using flashbacks, hallucinations and kinetic editing, Boyle transforms a necessarily static situation into a collage in which we get to see a man pondering his imminent demise and discovering whether he has what it takes to save himself.
Aron Ralston(James Franco), a mountain climber, embarks on a wilderness jaunt in a Utah national park without informing anyone where he was going. After a frenetic couple of hours on a mountain bike, he continues on foot and meets Megan(Amber Tamblyn) and Kristi(Kate Mara), who are lost. But in a freak accident, he is literally stuck between a rock and a hard place trapped by his forearm between a boulder and a cliff-face. Over the five six days, with no sign of rescue and his water having run out, the brutal solution to his ghastly predicament became increasingly clear.
Promising actor James Franco has delivered a hair raising performance that matches Danny Boyle’s technical brilliance with a mesmerizing depiction of Ralston’s strange internal journey. AR Rahman’s music has also boosted the strength of Boyle’s gory conclusion. The amputation scene is the handiwork of makeup artist Tony Gardner and his team. It is made with medically accurate in every minute detail. Multiple cameras are used to shoot the entire scene. Camerawork is really excellent in this scene.
All in all, 127 Hours has neither a message, nor a metaphorical meaning. It just deals with terrible story of Aron Ralston’s magnificent survival. But it is an exciting, touching and visually compelling film.