127 Hours is 5 days of torturous bliss

To be honest other than the sensational nature of the material I wasn't interested in a movie where the money shot was a man cutting off his own arm after being trapped for 5 days under a boulder. But the combination of Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slum Dog Millionaire) and James Franco (Spider-man 1-3 & Rise of the Planet of the Apes) was a frenetic alchemy that meshed flashback, recorded video and staggeringly quick edits into a visceral cinematic experience. Based on a true event, Mr. Franco plays Aron Ralston, a folksy dude who loves outdoor adventure. After briefly meeting and helping two lost female hikers find an underground lake its established that Ralston is a fun-loving person whose passion for hiking, skiing, mountain climbing is infectious. Promising to meet them later at a party he goes off alone to his doom. He falls down a steep narrow crevice were he ends up standing with his arm crushed between a huge rock and the wall of the ravine.

With only a days worth of water and a small utility knife, he realizes the dire straits upon him. He never looses his composure or humor even joking about being cheap and not spending extra money on a "real" Swiss Army Knife. There was one shot were he looks up through the thin opening of the ravine and see's a jet flying thousands of feet up over him. It gave you such a sense of perspective on how small and trapped he really was I was chilled thinking of what I would do in his position. Most directors and actors would now be stymied as to how to keep the momentum going. From here on out you know as a viewer it was 5 days of torture, tedium, delirium and drinking one's own urine. But Boyle and Franco expressed the lapsing of time with such grace, like Franco lifting his bare foot so that he could get just a tiny bit of sunlight or of him rewinding his vid-cam to long for his parents to keep him going was touching and soulful. And when that final moment arrived you cheered grotesquely with every bitter cut not because you wanted him to escape (that's a given) but because deep down inside you know you could not have made that horrific choice.

At 90 minutes the movie was both compact and jarring. The ultimate story of man facing himself and coming away better for it. Seeing the real Ralston swimming with his stub, snowboarding and playing with his newborn baby at the end of the film proved that he may have lost an arm but he gained and entire life.