127 Hours

Ratings: 7.0/10

Film Class: B

Genre: Drama

Overated. I realise if a movie is inspired by true events and it features a real person who endured great hardships to be where he is today, most reviewers would normally give it a high rating. Reason being very simple, if you don't, you're either someone heartless, or someone who has bad taste and "can't appreciate" such movies. Well, I don't really care how people would see my review but honestly speaking, 127 hours wasn't fantastic.

Aron Ralston, a carefree mountaineer and canyoneer who has always explored places by himself lands up in a life and death situation whereby his hand was trapped by a huge boulder and all he had was 2 days worth of food and water. If you do the maths, that's 48 hours, but as the movie title suggests, 127 hours. So you can expect that's not the end of the story.

Whether he lives or dies, guess you'll have to watch it for yourself. Just a few words of spoiler for you, the storyline is predictable. It's the process which makes the movie interesting to watch. And of course, the one scene you can expect to linger in your mind is the one already seen in the trailer... where the girl drops into an azure pool of water. One of the most beautiful movie scenes I've seen. The last scene might be unforgettable for some as well, but not for me.

The camera work was unique and intimate, in most cases we get to view stuff from either the first person's point of view or from unexpected places. But I didn't really know what to feel throughout the movie. Danny Boyle's movies always have such "feel-good" music that I suffered from .... some dissonance (a psychology term used to describe what you feel inside and what you express are two extreme opposites). I know I should feel sad for the main lead because of his predicament but the music didn't allow me to do so... and most of the time I was wondering why I didn't even feel sad for the lead... Tsk*

I thought that was why this movie failed for me. I had high expectations of it. But the director should have compromise his style for a different genre type of movie... His style worked tremendously well for SlumDog Millionnaire but in my honest opinion, not for this movie. His premonition about his future wife and his kid appeared too confusing when they first appeared because his future wife looked too similar to the girl he met along the way. Didn't quite understand his premonition initially (could be done on purpose, the way the real Aron Ralston experienced it). But I thought it would have been clearer if both female supporting leads didn't look that identical...