The 2nd part of my triple feature was Danny Boyle's "127 Hours". You may have seen his last big picture, "Slumdog Millionaire". Stylistically, a lot of this movie was the same. James Franco plays Aron Ralston (That's right, only 1 'A'.), an adrenaline junkie who gets his arm stuck between a rock and a hard place and ends up cutting it off with his pocketknife. If that was a huge spoiler alert for you, you should really consider picking up a newspaper, flipping through news channels or following internet news just a little bit.
James Franco does a pretty good job of reacting how you'd expect a cocky, young guy in his position to react and I think he may be a fairly underrated actor. His performance is what really makes this movie watchable. Danny Boyle's use of odd camera angles, flashy colors and lights and split-screen shots on ther hand are super distracting. I know that's his style and I can appreciate that to an extent but it was really what I imagine an acid trip would be like.
However...all is not lost because Mr Boyle is an excellent screenwriter, in my opinion. I think it can be pretty hard to make a true story, no matter how intense, into an watchable and even entertaining movie. It also showed Aron's (hopefully real-life) transformation from crazy, hapless adventurer into a cautious yet still enthuiastic man.
I was going to give this movie only 1 thumb up because of the LSD effect but as I was writing this my 2nd thumb started to rotate into the upright position so I'll give it 2 thumbs for showcasing a man's character change and a director's writing skill and flashy style of filmmaking.
No comments:
Post a Comment