127 Hours is not a film for the faint hearted but if you want to watch good, liberating cinema at its best, then this one's class!!

Rating: 8/10 (9 January 2011)

Despite good movies like 'Trainspotting' and '28 Days Later', it was 'Slumdog Millionaire' that propelled Danny Boyle to the League of Extraordinary Directors. Now being an Indian, I had no qualms with Slumdog Millionaire; I thought it was a good movie which deserved most of its honours. But, then again, every second Bollywood movie consists of action, drama and loads of 'masala', so Slumdog was something I'm immune to.
A.R.Rahman didn't need two Oscars and the Pussycat Dolls strutting to his number for him to be proved a success. I've seen way better Bollywood actors than Anil Kapoor and we all know that Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto have built a reputation that they themselves will find very hard to supersede. Also, Slumdog Millionaire portrayed India and Mumbai, my hometown, in a negative light. I still have to explain to my Brit friends here in the UK that Mumbai does not consist of slums and that half the customer service calls they make are answered from a place that's 10 minutes from where I live.
Based on the book 'Between a Rock and Hard Place' by mountaineer Aron Ralston, 127 Hours is a true story about life and how we need a jolt sometimes to wake us up to the realities that we take for granted. In Ralston's case, it was a very harsh reality that gave him overnight popularity but the ordeal that he went through for 127 Hours changed him as a person. The movies draws parallels with Castaway, or more recently with the Chilean miners in terms of the body's will to survive at any given cost.
The thing that stays with you long after 127 Hours is over is James Franco. 127 Hours is a films that will transcended him from an actor with a cute face to a serious talent. Like when Leonardo DiCaprio did Titanic you knew here was a superstar in the making. Franco has been used to playing second fiddle to Spiderman, but 127 Hours is all about him! He brings believability to a character in the throes of duress.
The story of Aron Ralston needed a character who could be realistic enough to watch be a carefree bird and adventurer yet bearable to watch severing his hand. Franco has the charm and the suave to be a ladies man, yet hes make you believe each of his hallucinations and makes you laugh at his pain with him during some of the deepest moments of the film. If this performance does not get him a Best Actor nod at the Oscars this year, I'll be tempted to cut off my own hand. How great will it be for an Oscar presenter to win the Oscars. I wonder when was the last time that happened!
A.R.Rahman does a fabulous job again with the music. It's challenging because the music could have been dark and morose and still worked well but he works with Boyle's moods in this film turning up the grungy guitars at parts yet hitting hollow strings during its lighter moments. 'If I Rise' is a mellow composition with Dido and himself. It may not be the 'Jai Ho' that the world danced to, but it talks about resurrection within its serene atmospheres, which is the main emotion of the film.
Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy have outdone themselves yet again. They could have focused on the way Ralston mended his relationships or the fame Ralston achieved after he went home. Yet they chose to keep the film simple. There are barely any secondary characters, yet it is the emotional journey of a man who believes in life. 127 Hours is a story about living and that's exactly how they have panned it out. The shots are mostly close-ups focusing on the emotions of the character and the scenes where he amputates his arm have been done exactly as they may have been done in real life, nothing made 'aesthetic' for the sake of dramatization.
When you leave the theater, its like you actually went through that ordeal and few films leave you with that feeling. True, it may have been claustrophobic at times, but thats exactly how they wanted it to be. You could literally feel his pain, his anguish, his despair, his loss and his hope and for that all credit goes to Danny Boyle and James Franco.