Review: 127 Hours
(Credit to its owner)
I just watched 127 Hours tonight.
Sorry if it is out-dated to you but the movie is released here today.
The best conversation I heard today in the threater, during the movie, was:
Girl A: Which one you think is better? The Green Hornet or this?
Girl B: Hahaha. The Green Hornet is actually funnier. Why do we always choose the most freakest movies to watch?
Girl A: You ask me.
[Both giggled]
[What kind of comparison is that? Me and my friends wanted to snap someone. Probably ourselves.]
(Credit to liveitout @ tumblr)
Since I had such an urge to cry after watching the trailer, I thought I could cry and get exhausted from sobbing then would sleep well tonight -- like how Edward Norton did in Fight Club (1999) when his character participated the support groups.
Okay, I went too far. Anyway, the movie is amazing but it is not lachrymose, so no crying.
If James Franco cannot win the Academy Award for Best Actor this year, he is going to win it in the futune. The world is his oyster.
When everything in the movie is too good it becomes too short.
Since the true story and the screenplay, the almost-only actor, the director (Danny Boyle) and basically everyone involved in the movie is such talented and promising -- I don't think they would ruin, if not enhances, the move with an extra 15 minutes -- I wish they could have lengthened and detailed every scenes, such as his flashbacks, and such as the scene with Aron Ralston rolling his limbs with the climbing sling as a sleeve to keep warm, which is unfortunately fast-forwarded in the movie.
Aron's arm was retrieved from the canyon as the boulder was lifted by thirteen men with a winch, and a hydraulic jack.
Also, Aron went back the the scene of the accident in 2004 to scatter the ashes of his amputated arm over the boulder that had trapped him.
I hope they would have included these powerful moments in the movie.
The theme of the movie is about "the will to live".
However, Aron said that what supported him to live when he was trapped in the canyon was the power of love from his family, so I wish there would display the after effect of the story.
Perhaps a reunion scene or a little follw-up to the character as well as the reaction of the public, as we all remember how astonished, impressed and most of all, inspired by the news back in 2003.
Since so many people fainted during the amputation scene, I expected it would be super graphic and bloody. Nevertheless, the scene is very brief and not unendurable to me since I am quite used to see blood.
But my friend, who is also a fellow nurse student, commented it gross.
So I guess it depends on personal tolerance.
What the movie could never show to the audience is "the fire sensation burning up the arm" as Aron described the moment he cut the "strand of spaghetti" -- nerves.
In fact, Aron cut his arm layer by layer for an hour.
When he broke the bones he actually smiled and felt relieved because he did not have to cut it with a dull knife.
Not the movie, or Franco's fault. Just NO one can resonant, or better say, IMAGINE such powerful experience.
This is the clip where Aron describes the amputation in the spot.
Click to viewNow I have to read Aron's book Between A Rock and A Hard Place.
P.S.: I lost my glasses after the movie (long story).
I am trying my very best to be mellow because all I can think of is there was a man lost his own ARM in a middle of nowhere.