127 hours

127 Hours

127 hours is the story of Aron Ralston, who was hiking through Blue John Canyon when he dislodges a boulder and it pins his arm to the canyon wall.  Ralston, played by James Franco, is an experienced outdoorsman who decides to take a weekend visit to the canyons in the Moab desert in Utah.  Unfortunately he forgets to tell anyone where he is going and ends up knocking a boulder loose and getting his hand trapped between the rock and the canyon wall.  During the 127 hours that Ralston is trapped he runs out of food and water and is forced to make some very tough decisions if he wants to survive.  Franco does an amazing job playing Ralston.  This is the first time I can ever really think of seeing Franco in a serious role and after watching this movie it is not hard to figure out why he was nominated for an Oscar.  Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy do a great job of taking Ralston’s book and turning it into a very entertaining movie, and that cannot have been an easy job.  The book was very long with each day he was trapped taking at least fifty pages.  They stayed fairly close to the book with a few additions and omissions along the way.  The one thing that was left out of the movie that I would have liked to see was all the rescue effort that his family and friends put into finding him.  It was interesting to me to read about all of the frustration and joy that comes from planning a rescue operation with very little information.  They obviously had to leave out some parts of the book but I think the rescue operation would have been an interesting addition to the movie.    

                I highly recommend this movie if you have not seen it already.  It is not the most action packed movie ever but the story is solid and the acting on Franco’s part is just fantastic.  It also has the whole overcoming adversity thing that personally gets me every time.    

I give 127 hours 4.5 out of 5 stars.

My next review will be on the reimagining of a William Shakespeare’s classic “Gnomeo and Juliet.”

Now as always I will end with, “You don’t have to go home, but you have to get the hell out of here!”