Mom, I love you. I wish I’d returned all of your calls, ever. I really have lived this last year. I wish I had learned some lessons more astutely, more rapidly, than I did. I love you. I’ll always be with you.
Other than “Shallow Grave,” “Trainspotting” and the first two-thirds of “28 Days Later,” I have always felt something missing from Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s work. His eclectic ability to move in and out of different genres and how he continues to push himself as a vibrant visualist continues to impress, but there’s something about his later work, including the Academy Award-winning “Slumdog Millionaire,” lacking in that all-important element that stays with you once the lights come up. At their best, movies keep on keeping on as they pull and tug and find their own emotional home in the human soul. Boyle’s simply don’t, and there’s so much right about “127 Hours,” so many impressive pieces, and yet as a whole, this true story of a young man forced to make an awful choice is, in the end, something completely forgettable.
Based on an incredible 127 hours in the life of Aron Ralston (James Franco), an adrenaline junkie who ends up paying for his solitary ways after he finds his arm wedged between a canyon wall and a boulder while canyoneering alone in the Utah desert, Boyle pulls every trick in the book and invents some new ones in order to turn into cinema what is essentially a one location, one actor drama. Flashbacks that piece together both the practical and emotional reasons that brought Ralston to this perilous situation combined with vivid hallucinations driven by days of exposure, thirst, and hunger, gives a television movie concept a rightful place on the big screen.
Emotionally, “127 Hours” commendably avoids melodrama by focusing on that part of the human condition most of us can relate to. Ralston isn’t a bad person buried by crushing regrets, but once he’s forced to spend a number of harrowing days facing his own mortality and who he is as a person, he awakens to the fact that he could be a better man. Up until now, he’s led the life of someone determined to avoid the emotional entanglements that come with personal relationships. Footloose and fancy-free is Ralston’s motto and the endless solitude of a barren and beautiful desert is his spiritual home. In small ways we’re all guilty of, he pushes people away, good people like his parents who want and deserve a place in his life. But now that he’s dying, those slights that seemed so small at the time, like not returning his mother’s phone call, now carry a weight of regret they wouldn’t to a man with his whole life in front of him.
Franco is good as Ralston, especially in the early-going gonzo stuff. But once the second act begins and he’s the whole show for the remaining 80 minutes or so, he holds the screen and ably communicates the anguish of a character slowly but inevitably running out of life and faced with an unthinkable choice. For the one person who’s going to bitch in the comments about the lack of a spoiler alert involving a plot turn everyone’s aware of, let me just say that the final sequence is unnecessarily explicit, unwatchable, and feels as though it goes on forever.
The film’s central problem, though, remains the emotional-staying-power component. Personally I loved that Ralston’s regrets were — within the context of what we usually see on film — relatively small. Unlike, say, Will Smith’s overwrought “Seven Pounds,” the sins Ralston recounts in his life have nothing to do with something big, such as his thoughtlessness causing the death of another. Instead, what this young man realizes is that his sins involved the pushing away of others in ways both big and small. Obviously, the situation he ultimately finds himself in is part of a Karmic price paid for being such a loner, but the story takes that idea to a more universal place that reminded me of my priest’s definition of a sin: “Anything that harms a relationship, be it with a fellow human being or God.”
Unfortunately, everything is so slick, so professional, so showy and meant to dazzle that the beating heart of it all gets lost somewhere in the meticulous story structure and editing. “127 Hours” feel less like an emotional journey and more like a product. Pretty to look at but not something you’re going to take home with you.
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.