127 HOURS – danny boyle – 5.8 / 10

With every successive film, Danny Boyle’s style has become more frantic and aggressive.  Trainspotting, made fifteen years ago, was fast-paced and full of quick cuts, but always in the service of the story.  28 Days Later, released in 2002, featured even faster cutting and introduced the swooping, shaky, handheld aesthetic that would become Boyle’s signature visual style.  But as with Trainspotting, this was largely justified by the story the film was telling.  In 2008, Boyle amped up his jittery, washed-out style even more for Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most aggressively in-your-face films ever made.  Though the story hardly seemed to warrant it, Slumdog Millionaire pulled every annoying trick in the book, turning the whole thing into a garish disaster.  It’s hard to imagine a more frenzied, hectic film.  Hard, that is, until you sit down to watch 127 Hours.

The style of 127 Hours is trademark Boyle, lots of extremely quick cuts, flashes of color, canted angles and odd framing choices.  It’s the same sort of frantic nonsense he overindulged in with Slumdog Millionaire.  But this time, the subject matter is equally belligerent and frantic, making the whole film an exercise in obnoxiousness.

127 Hours tells the story of Aron Ralston, a mountain climber who had the misfortune of getting pinned under a boulder, as he suffers through dehydration and hallucinations before finally severing his own hand in order to escape his confinement.  It’s a harrowing story that was bound to be a little traumatizing (not to mention stomach-churning) no matter how it was filmed and edited.  But Boyle’s decision to bring out his usual bag of manic tricks turns the whole thing into an aggressively obnoxious mess that tries way too hard to have an impact.  Rather than simply telling Ralston’s remarkable story, 127 Hours embellishes all over it, making a mess of what might have been a very moving film otherwise.

While his visual choices might be suspect, Boyle’s choice of leading man is not.  As Aron Ralston, James Franco turns in a great performance, one that mostly manages to cut through the visual clutter and bring out the raw emotion of Ralston’s plight.  The power of a story like this is in imagining-- while you’re watching it-- having to go through a similar ordeal.  Franco makes that sense of identification palpable.  He’s the film’s greatest asset.

Franco’s performance, along with the remarkable true story the film is depicting, almost make 127 Hours worth recommending.  But it’s such a difficult film to watch (in both senses of the word) that the only pleasure to be had in watching it is making it through to the end.  A good time at the movies this is not.

But that, I guess, is sorta the point.  And that renders 127 Hours somewhat criticism-proof.  It’s not a very good movie.  It’s not made particularly well.  And there’s no real re-watch value (once you know what happens, that’s all there is to it).  But that doesn’t matter.  The film isn’t about any of those things.  Watching the film is an ordeal.  And though it’s a miniscule fraction of the ordeal Aron Ralston endures, making it through to the other side is all that matters.