Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2011

127 Hours: © 2010 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

Aron Ralston, a cocky rock climber (James Franco) heads out for a solo crawl through the canyons of Utah, neglects to tell anyone where he’s going, and then…oops! He falls down a crevasse and gets his hand trapped under a boulder. He then spends the title time period trying to get out, ultimately Doing What’s Necessary. It’s impossible to not ask yourself what you would have done, or to hope you’ll never have to answer that question. This is not an action movie; the guy can’t move. It’s not a thriller; we know he got out because he later wrote a book about it (the appropriately if obviously titled Between a Rock and a Hard Place). But Danny Boyle (Trainspotting; Slumdog Millionaire) uses flashbacks, hallucinations and great camerawork to turn this straightforward survival story into a film that’s intense, thoughtful, and even darkly funny in spots. Okay, Franco has never been high on my convincing-actor list, but he’s come up several notches. One scene involves what amounts these days to very minor gore, but the fact that it really happened makes it more frightening than a stack of Saw movies. Do not let this keep you from seeing it.