127 Hours: Inconsequential, Inconclusive, and Disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (4 February 2011)

It's difficult, around this time of year, to maintain one's cynicism toward awards ceremonies. So many major winners of the last decade have, to me, seemed so horridly overrated that it is difficult to lend any credence to an Oscar nomination anymore. Nonetheless, I was drawn into the premise of 127 Hours: the prospect of a single setting, and the ever likable James Franco.
A true-life story of climber/canyoneer Aron Ralston, 127 Hours follows the character as he sets out for the weekend to Blue John canyon. Having told nobody where he is going, Ralston intends to fully enjoy the escapism the wilderness brings. This self-imposed isolation becomes a burden, however, when he finds himself trapped, a fallen boulder crushing his arm against a crevasse wall.
The praise heaped upon writer/director Danny Boyle following his previous effort Slumdog Millionaire is indelibly related to the cynicism mentioned above. Slumdog, for me, was a perfectly fine film, but in no way deserving of such championing. Boyle's position as director was something of a bad omen as such, leaving me slightly worried about what might happen with the film. These worries appear justified almost immediately, Boyle splitting the screen to a triptych (though technically not) showing large crowds of people. This carries on for almost ten minutes, the broken screen fine for a credit sequence but rapidly tired-out and overused almost immediately after. Thankfully it subsides eventually, allowing us to take in the wonderful setting of the film. The vast canyon expanse is quite, quite beautiful, given appropriate treatment with wide angle lenses. It is fewer than twenty minutes before Ralston becomes trapped, the trailer-featured scenes with two female fellow adventurers apparently consisting of the entirety of their presence in the film. Not that I'm complaining, mind; sitting in a canyon with James Franco was what I paid to do. And Franco is wonderful, his performance carrying the film exactly as it needs to. One moment in particular, immediately after Ralston's hallucinatory imagining of a talk show, demonstrates perfectly Franco's humanity in this role. Unfortunately, Boyle seems to have insufficient confidence in entrusting the entirety of the film to the strength of Franco's performance, and consequentially we are left with regular flashbacks, imagined party scenes, bizarre appearances of Scooby Doo, and agonisingly infuriating gimmicky camera-work. It seems as though the film is trying to add a layer of quirky geekiness to its effects, and these prove little more than distracting and deprecating, leaving us with fewer moments of pure performance. An additional qualm comes in the form of Ralston's character as expressed in the film. I found his story inescapably comparable to that of Christopher McCandless, the inspiration behind Sean Penn's infinitely superior Into the Wild. Unlike Into the Wild, 127 Hours does not manage to build itself a protagonist with sufficient depth of characterisation to craft a meaningful message, resigning itself instead to the status of mere story. We emerge from 127 Hours with little on our minds to consider, save the reuse of that damned triptych effect.
Though its star delivers a very fine performance—when the director has faith enough to allow him to perform, that is—127 Hours just seems inconsequential, inconclusive, and disappointing. This is the sort of film from which one should take home a message of sorts, but the thinly-sketched and unconflicted character at its heart prevents any such meaningfulness. Oddly enough, it's this film's potential which drags it down.