127 Hours
25 Jan 2011. Location: Cinema
Plot premise: Man gets stuck in canyon and has to cut his own arm off.
Danny Boyle's new film centres on that most primal of human fears: That if you're trapped in a canyon for 5 days, you'll start hallucinating Dido songs.
Seriously though, I'm going with other reviews on this one and saying that Danny's approach to soundtracking a film appears to be the shuffle feature on his entire CD collection. And that's not neccessarily a 'good' thing.
As for the film itself, very watchable. Way more than I thought it was going to be, thanks to Aron (James Franco). The likeableness of his character as he tries to keep his mind together juxtaposes nicely with him obviously being some kind of fucking dickhead for trotting off round the canyons on his own, not letting anyone know where he was going (etc. I know, it's hammered home enough in the film).
If anything, I found the first half hour or so more hard work than the rest, not sure why. But for a film that should be deeply claustrophobic and un-nerving, it was a fairly easy-view. Of course, by the time he starts hacking at his arm, I'd been willing him to do it for about 20 minutes, just to get some adrenaline flowing.
Much seems to be made about the fact that he left his Swiss Army Knife behind when he made this trip, and that it would have been MUCH better than the crappy multi-tool he did bring. But surely he would have blunted the blades on that in exactly the same way before deciding it was quicker to hack his arm off? Nice use of audio in that sequence, by the way.
Anyway, as a film it's good, but I've no real desire to watch it again, and I don't think it's really taught me anything. Although it didn't apparently teach Aron anything either, if the closing captions are anything to go by. He still goes trekking off, but now he "leaves a note". Christ.
The only real problem I have is this angle of an "inspiring true story". All it's inspired me to do is not be a fucking idiot, does that count? It's not 'that' triumphant, he loses a fucking arm. I'd like to say that it's life teaching him a lesson, but... well, see above.
It's better than it has any right to be, but born of stupidity.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
No comments:
Post a Comment