127 Hours as a film was always going to be harrowing, intense, remarkable, hard to watch and so on. Aron Ralston’s story is just too astonishing and too simple for it not to be effective. It absolutely insists on empathy and as the audience filters out of the theater, the first and only question on everyone’s lips will be, “Could you do that?” If you don’t know what “that” is then you haven’t been paying attention. Ralston’s story has been all over the news in recent weeks, and before that his bestseller Between a Rock and a Hard Place did well enough to pierce the social consciousness. However, to avoid from the start any ambiguity, this is a story about a man whose arm gets trapped under a rock, and the choice he makes to cut it off. With any Top 25 Director and any Top 10 Face behind this story, you’re almost guaranteed serious Oscar contention. It must be for this reason then that I ended up feeling underwhelmed by Danny Boyle’s latest. Of course I was moved, because the reality of this situation is moving, but despite how successful this thing was always going to be, Danny Boyle somehow was able to get in his own way. His style and his choices, so often exciting and strong, end up being frustratingly omnipresent and controlling. Somehow he ended up over-telling a story that was fully prepared to tell itself.
Peter Wertz
Wertz of Wisdom 