Franco buoys this finely attuned tale of perseverance & the human spirit; Boyle & Co. do a great service to a possibly stagnant plot.

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2010)

127 HOURS (2010) ***1/2 James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Treat Williams, Kate Burton, Lizzy Caplan. Absorbing fact-based human drama about freewheeling Aron Ralston (played with remarkable focus and depth by Franco) whose high-spirits are soon met with a devastating bluntness: while on a solo expedition in the desert wilds of Utah he is trapped – literally – between a rock and a hard place. Faced with imminent danger to his health, Ralston does everything he can to survive including (spoiler alert) remove himself by any means necessary. Filmmaker Danny Boyle's true achievement in making a possibly stagnant plot line (man in crevasse screwed for days on end) with ingenuity largely due to his creative screenplay (based on Ralston's book "Between a Rock and a Hard Place") with Simon Beaufoy allows the viewer to see what Ralston is (and what the filmmakers have imagined as flights of fancy) buoyed by a rock solid (sorry for the pun) turn by Franco and expert work by cinematographers Enrique Chediak & Anthony Dod Mantle and crafty editing by Jon Harris. A fine depiction of facing the odds, overcoming and persevering.