127 Hours (2010)

127 hours is the incredible story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s remarkable adventure to save himself after a falling boulder crashes onto his arm, trapping him in a deserted canyon in Utah. With only a day’s worth of water, a blunt penknife and an unwavering will to survive Aron does everything he can to make it out alive.

Overall Review Score

2.5 out of 10

Review

127 Hours is a 2010 survival drama based on Aron Ralston’s memoir ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’. It features James Franco Aron and tells the story of how he survived 127 hours in Blue John Canyon in Utah in April 2003 when a boulder left him isolated and trapped. While the film starts by taking the audience on a whistle-stop tour of Aron’s life from a mother he is ignoring to an apartment in need of cleaning and from a strange obsessive hobby to a complete disregard for human safety, it is only until Aron gets to Blue John Canyon that the character starts to connect with the audience. Although, as the film progresses, its one dimensional acting coupled with its single set atmosphere and rather rushed ending quickly alienates the audience and causes them to simply ignore the pain or emotional tragedy that Aron is going through. Overall, 127 hours is a story of one humans desire to survive despite all the odds being stacked against him but due to poor script execution, a short 89-minute run time and rather uninteresting set design the audience will quickly lose interest in this film and will struggle to survive until the end. It is not a bad film just one that should have focused more on developing its main character rather than trying to make the audience pass out or worse at the gore of Aron having to cut his arm off to survive.

Reviewer 1's score & comments:

Score: 2 out of 10

Comments:

127 Hours is a hard film to define and score without seeming critical of Aron Ralston, the mountain climber whom the story is based on. Putting aside any personal issues with Aron’s bad planning for going climbing without telling anyone where he would be or taking any kind of communications device in case he got into trouble, 127 hours is definitely going to be a hit or a miss film for audiences. Either they will enjoy the heart-wrenching story of human perseverance as they witness Aron’s struggle for survival or they will become bored quickly with the ‘one piece set’, frequent hallucinations and lack of interesting dialogue.

Reviewer 2's score & comments:

Score: 3 out of 10

Comments:

127 hours is a film that offers very limited variety and often comes across as a bad infomercial on how to panic and not react when pinned under a rock in the middle of the desert. While the film is based on a true story and Aron Ralston clearly went through an emotional ordeal, this never really came across and the more I watched the less I cared. The single set, poor acting and silly video log (vlog) interludes combined with bizarre hallucinations, such as, Scooby-Doo just left me wondering if Aron would have been trapped if he had wasted time attempting to be a glorified tour guide for seemingly lost female climbers. Overall, 127-hours is a film whereby the main character never feels truly vulnerable and whereby the poor acting underpins a mediocre script.

#jamesfranco #documentary #drama