127 hours full movie
Review: Hours
After five days (and seven hours) spent trapped in a lonely corner of Utah’s desert canyons, his right hand crushed and pinned beneath a dislodged boulder, amateur outdoorsman Aron Ralston amputated his own forearm with a pen knife so dull it could barely slice through skin.
That sure is one sensational hook—I mean, fuck!—but it resolves into an uplifting takeaway (survival against all odds), and the one-two combination has made Ralston instantly and enduringly famous.
Named ’s Man of the Year by GQ and Vanity Fair, he’s lit up the TV talk-show circuit, toured the world as a motivational speaker, and authored the bestselling chronicle Between a Rock and a Hard Place. On its face, Ralston’s memoir is a grisly worst-case scenario, but in essence it’s a journey of self-discovery that leads its spiritually wayward hero to find meaning and purpose through family (Ralston regrets neglecting his parents and romantic partners, has visions of the son he’ll someday father).
That dynamic is easily absorbed within the thematic universe of director Danny Boyle, whose latest film transforms Ralston’s story into an idiosyncratic star vehicle for screwball stud James Franco.
Biography 127 hours review He shouts for help, but who can hear? There are hyperreal flashbacks and color-processed fantasies. Ad — content continues below. Pain and bloodshed are so common in the movies.A director of modern-day fables and fairy tales, Boyle disguises (just barely) his conventionally sentimental and spiritually romantic vision by way of surface-action brutality and verité affect. His plots may portray a fallen world—from the murder, greed, and romantic betrayal of his debut, Shallow Grave (94), to the grinding poverty, ethnic pogroms, and child slavery of Slumdog Millionaire (08)—but with the reliability of a Victorian novelist, Boyle rewards virtue, punishes vice, and ensures that True Love conquers all.
The hallmarks of his rough-edged, location-shot style (gritty textures, slurred motion, blown-out source lights, and oversaturated colors) are analogous to the calculated use of distortion and feedback in commercial music: the surface static keeps the dance beat and pop melodies from seeming saccharine.
But another aspect of this scenario is quite uncongenial to Boyle’s on-the-run style: for most of the film, the hero can barely move.
In interviews, Boyle has described this as a challenge that appealed to him. In practice, he effectively cheats his way out of it. One might have hoped that the restricted space would force Boyle (as it did Ralston) to pay close attention to the most minute details of his environment, to discover hidden opportunities for action, and to systematically develop the scenario’s progress.
Biography 127 hours review new york times Ralston is at least fortunate to be standing on a secure foothold; one can imagine the boulder falling and leaving him dangling in mid-air from the trapped arm. The ball lodged somewhere on the way down. Much like Ryan Reynolds in this year's indie darling Buried, Franco is on screen for virtually every frame of Hours. He begins to fall in and out of consciousness, suffers severe dehydration and records a video utilizing a camera he'd brought with him to be given to his family once his body is found.Boyle may not be Robert Bresson, but here he doesn’t even try to be. Instead of latching onto substance, he overdoses on style.
Two primary cinematographers (Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak) employed three kinds of camera (35mm, DV, and still). They shot split-screen triptychs and time-lapse cloudscapes.
Their cameras hurtle across the canyonlands, shoot into space, simulate the traveling POV of a water molecule sucked through a hose.
Biography 127 hours review rotten tomatoes Written by Ryan Lambie. Sign up for the Film Comment Letter! The ball lodged somewhere on the way down. His editor, Jon Harris, achieves the delicate task of showing an arm being cut through without ever quite showing it.There are hyperreal flashbacks and color-processed fantasies. There’s interpolated footage from Ralston’s camera, with video noise and corruption and LCD status bars. There are memories of youthful exploits, shot and scored like soda commercials. There is a montage of actual soda commercials.
127 hours movie Boyle sets the stage for the intense yet closely confined adventure we're about to undertake by serving up what essentially serves as a minute appetizer of character development giving us insight into Ralston's aura of cockiness and bravado. Franco, who has been widely acclaimed for performances as James Dean and in the comedy Pineapple Express, gives the performance of his lifetime here as Ralston, a performance that is offered with such incredible focus, vulnerability and passion that one literally trembles at time watching him. Rahman, whose rousing score here adds immeasurably to the film in both its highs and its lows. Thoughtful, original film criticism delivered straight to your inbox each week.There are extreme close-ups. And every foley effect is so very, very expressive. The insistently striking visuals and maximum impact sound design seem to betray a lack of confidence in the material—a manic edge and nervous grin that too loudly declares: You see, it’s not boring at all! “I wanted that urban rhythm,” Boyle said in an interview, “which is incessant and just keeps going.” Indeed.
But James Franco is quite good.
Though he has the square-jawed virility of a leading man, his offbeat charm is that of a great character actor.
Precocious but unpretentious, funny but not fully in on the joke, Franco has a disarmingly endearing personality, and he brings all of that and more to this performance. After headlining a half-dozen forgettable movies that wasted his talent, it seems that Franco’s film career has finally hit its stride. More, please.