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James Franco stars as a climber stuck in the Utah desert in Danny Boyle’s captivating drama “127 Hours.” |
Several viewers keeled over while watching Danny Boyle’s fact-based drama at its Telluride Film Festival premiere earlier this year. That’s actually a testimonial for Boyle’s captivating survival movie and for James Franco’s phenomenal performance as an adrenaline junkie rock climber who spent 127 hours with his arm crushed between rocks in the Utah desert mountains.
Watching a single actor remain stationary for an entire movie might sound horrendous. But as anyone who saw Ryan Reynolds trapped in a coffin in “Buried” can attest, outstanding dramas can take place in the tiniest of spaces.
Boyle continues to astonish his fans and critics with another movie that Monty Python members might call “something completely different.”
He earned best picture and director Oscars for his India-inspired “Slumdog Millionaire.” Before that, Boyle showed us viral Armageddon in “28 Days Later,” the scary final frontier of space in “Sunshine,” neo-noir thrills in “Shallow Grave” and a wondrous children’s adventure in “Millions.”
Boyle isn’t about to start boring anyone now. He starts “127 Hours” with a rockin’, rollin’ soundtrack under vintage 1960s split-screen visuals showing Franco’s Aaron Ralston to be a loner and adventurer driven to finding that sweet spot called his comfort zone then diving merrily out of it.
Franco, perhaps best known as the Green Goblin’s spawn in the “Spider-man” movies, morphs into his real-life character without any of the fuss and pretension that usually comes with his performances. (He played legendary poet Allan Ginsberg earlier this year in “Howl.”) (Read more…)