2/5 popcorns

Anyone who saw Danny Boyle’s sappy yet critically acclaimed drama ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (2008) knows exactly what to expect from his most recent picture, ‘127 Hours.’ The acclaimed director has ironically, at the height of his fame, transformed from a provocative visionary into a filmmaker with a daytime talk show host’s soft spot for uplifting tales of heroism.

Boyle has long delighted in depicting the great depths of human despair, be it through the heroin addicts in ‘Trainspotting’ (1996) or the hunted protagonists of his great horror film ’28 Days Later’ (2002). The English director has recently come to appreciate the resiliency of the human spirit, but he lays on his affection with more ludicrous melodrama than a single film can accommodate.

Where ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was shamelessly manipulative in stretches, the dramatic excess in ‘127 Hours’ is not as aggravating because it is a true story. In Boyle’s defense, the events that inspired the film are quite unbelievable.

While exploring Utah’s gorgeous Blue John Canyon, engineer and mountain climber Aron Ralston (James Franco) slips through a crack in the earth and recovers to find his arm pinned to the cliff by an immovable boulder. The expert outdoorsman keenly keeps track of his water and chips away slowly at the rock, to no avail. Ralston inevitably realizes his situation is utterly hopeless, unless he severs his own arm with a dull blade.

Boyle’s considerable talent is on full display for much of the production, as he manages to fashion a very gripping story while mired in an extremely tight space. Boyle does not seem at all inhibited by the lack of space, beautifully highlighting the textures, the tightness and the unforgiving nature of Ralston’s surroundings. With the help of his terrific leading man, Boyle somehow makes it entertaining.

The film’s achievement as a rare brand of suspense is due in no small part to Franco, whose portrayal of Ralston is heart wrenching, even without the overdramatic soundtrack. Franco’s sense of humor is vital in terms of keeping the audience involved, and he looks very much the part of a person who is on the verge of death but refusing to resign to it. In his portrayal of a man who is down but never out, one bears witness to the maturation of a great talent into a fine dramatic actor.

The film’s final act is less manipulative than it might have been if it wasn’t based on a true story, but Boyle’s execution is still inexcusable. Plenty of viewers will allow themselves to be swallowed up by the grand finale to the inspiring tale of survival. Others will recognize that in romanticizing Ralston’s achievement with emotionally numbing frame after emotionally numbing frame, Boyle is lessening the film’s primal impact. Boyle presents a gritty, entirely engrossing story and proceeds to deflate his work with overwrought images of family all stacked together, begging shamelessly for tears.

That is not to say the film’s faults are encapsulated in a single scene. Ralston has no faults besides his carelessness in exploring the world, and many of his flashbacks are not sufficiently engrossing and are occasionally contrived.

Franco’s performance carries the film, and Boyle is still a fascinating filmmaker when he’s in his element, graphically distilling the harshness of the world in the struggles of an ordinary man embroiled in an extraordinary scenario. Had Boyle retained the edge he kept well sharpened until two years ago, ‘127 Hours’ might have been a great work.

Instead, it plays out like a Danny Boyle film commissioned by Oprah.

smlittma@syr.edu

Published on December 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm