127 Hours

Directed by Danny Boyle

(R)

****

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Danny Boyle’s daring new film is a “stirring, often funny, sometimes lyrical, and unusually thoughtful” story of survival, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. In 2003, 27-year-old adventurer Aron Ralston, played here by James Franco, got trapped in a slot canyon in Utah when a falling boulder pinned his arm against the canyon’s wall. A film about the five days and seven hours before Ralston famously freed himself by amputating his crushed arm could have been “as confining for the camera as it was for the hero.” But Boyle’s dramatization is “thrillingly alive,” said Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. Whether he’s wedging us in with the protagonist or using Ralston’s memories and hallucinations to break out of the canyon, Boyle “pumps every frame of 127 Hours with cinematic adrenaline.” Yet it’s Franco, giving his “most natural and nuanced” performance to date, who must, and does, keep us watching. This film truly “gets under your skin,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. “It pins you down, shakes you up, and leaves you glad to be alive.”