127 Hours is Danny Boyle‘s newest film based on the book by Aron Ralston, starring James Franco, Treat Williams, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Clémence Poésy and Lizzy Caplan.

Plot:
Aron (James Franco) is a passionate mountain climber and spends a lot of time exploring. One weekend brings him to the Blue John Canyon, where he first plays guide to two young women (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn). He then goes off alone to explore the Canyon further when a boulder gets dislodged and traps his arm and himself in complete isolation. Left to his own devices, Aron has to figure out what to do.

I was at once completely satisfied and also disappointed by this film. While James Franco is freaking amazing, and the story is fascinating, for the most part of the film, neither Danny Boyle nor A. R. Rahman were any good.

Ah, splitscreen, second bane of my movie-going existence (the first one, because much more frequent: shaky cam). It only works in a very limited set of circumstances – and these circumstances are not present here. And still, Danny Boyle insists on using it several times. This gave the movie an unfocused feel, besides annoying the hell out of me.

Add to that that Rahman’s music was pretty obnoxious and tried to make itself the center of attention all the time, even when it shouldn’t have been, and the movie was all over the place for the longest stretches.

Boyle (and Simon Beaufoy) were probably afraid to do an entire film in the limited space of the canyon. Therefore they over-emphasised Aron’s hallucinations (though the Scooby Doo is effective and very creepy) [the part in the end with his visions coming true, was quite ridiculous – I really didn’t like it] to get a little more variation. Personally, I think that was not only unnecessary, it even hurt the film. It only really comes together, when it gets claustrophobic: The scene where [SPOILER, I guess] Aron amputates his arm [/SPOILER] is perfectly done: Here, Boyle, Rahman and Franco make you feel the pain yourself. Also, when they portray his thirst, you really feel it.

It’s even more of a waste to move that much away from Aron in the canyon, because Franco could have easily carried the entire film (and then some). He was brilliant. [Now, if he could only stop making Appatow-stoner-comedies, he might even move on my list of “automatically see every movie he’s in”…]

Summarising: Still worth seeing.