The true meaning of an adventure.

Rating: 8/10 (15 January 2011)

127 is the perfect movie for someone who hasn't thought about their future or doesn't have a lot of hope in life. It's an extremely brilliant adventure that takes you to places you have never dreamt of going to.
The movie is based on the book "Between A Rock And A Hard Place" by Aron Ralston. The book is about Ralston's life changing week with his arm stuck between a boulder and the Blue John canyon.
In the movie, Ralston is played by James Franco (Spiderman, Pineapple Express), who shows such realistic and believable enthusiasm through out the whole film, he really puts his whole heart and soul into acting this role. Its an easy character to mess up, but he doesn't miss his target one single bit. The start of the movie is mainly showing you who Aron Ralston is on the inside, a bit of a stupid and big headed electritionist who doesn't answer his mom's calls and doesn't tell anyone where and what he's up to. After about five minutes of up-beat music and Ralston getting ready for a hike, the scene moves to a desert at about eight o'clock in the morning, and Aron riding a mountain bike to the mighty Blue John canyon.
When arriving at the canyon, Aron runs into two girls around about his age, Christie and Megan, who are looking for a 'dome' in the location. Ralston, knowing every inch of the canyon, directs them to the 'dome' with a warm hand shake and nice big grin, he also takes them to a water hole under ground, where they all have fun diving and jumping into the gorgeous blue liquid. After about an hour, Aron leaves the two girls, who also invite him to their party the next night, and runs off to continue his hike. Soon enough, Aron comes to his famous fall and crushing experience, as he jumps off of a ledge, and brings a huge rock down the gap with him, locking his arm in an terribly painful position against the wall of the canyon and the huge chalk stone. Ralston panics but tries to hold himself together, trying to push up the rock from his arm, with no luck, he gets out everything from his ruck sack and finds a blunt pen knife which he uses to try and chip away the rock with. after a few days of recording his days and still chipping away at the rock, Aron comes to the idea of cutting of his arm, but the pen knife isn't very sharp for that sort of thing, so he gives up and ponders through other possibilities of how to get himself out of this mess. Ralston starts having visions of his past and epiphanies of how he would re-start his life if he gets the chance. He pictures his close families and friends all sitting on and around a couch, and the next vision is of a small boy, possibly being either himself at a younger age, or his future child (which Aron Ralston later has in late February 2010) but, after seeing this young boy, he realise what he has to do, he breaks both bones in his arm and well, you know the rest. After going through this whole tear-jurking struggle of keeping faith in himself Ralston starts to reconstruct his entire life, he continues to hike and climb mountains, but he "always leaves a note, to tell people where he's going" -
this movie really is a phenomenon and a real pleasure to watch, even with a bit of gore here and there. James Franco just is Aron Ralston, i could not imagine a better actor for this part. I can gladly say its my favourite film to watch in the cinema at the moment, and i will definitely be getting it on DVD when it is released. Thank you Aron Ralston for taking us on this beautiful journey of inspiration.