Going into this movie, I was unfamiliar with real life events that had occurred, and I really was unsure of what to expect from the film. I knew that James Franco had historically been a goofier actor, and someone who typically was in comedy styled films. But given the description of the film I had an idea that this was going to be a more serious story. And I will report back that yes, this film is indeed on the more serious/intense end of the spectrum. 127 Hours – (2010) was refreshingly intense as a film. This movie forces you to watch a man decide whether or not he was going to be able to survive an unfortunate circumstance that he openly acknowledges is in large part his fault. The mental journey that we watch Franco’s character go through, combined with the horrifically graphic physical situation with the rock pinning him, provides a great experience as a viewer. This movie is hard to watch, but I feel is ultimately worth the watch as you can put yourself in his shoes, and experience the crazy story of Aron Ralston. The performance from Franco, combined with the well written story, earns an 8/10 from me for Acting/Writing. The story is as I said, difficult to watch for some people, so I felt I couldn’t give much higher of a score. Regardless, Aron Ralston in real life is a wild man!

The Visual Effects and Casting/Set Design/Costumes categories were the two strongest categories to me. The visuals that they used throughout the film to show the mental head space of Aron during his plight were excellent, and the way that they decided to film the various scenes with his arm, simply could not watch without cringing and getting goose bumps. Then the Casting for Aron with James Franco was actually really good. I thought that Franco did an excellent job recreating Aron on the screen, and they very similar to one another from the photos at the end of the film. Each of these categories earn 9/10 from me.

The Film Score for the movie was surprisingly good to me. I love the 2000’s musical era, and they really leaned into it a few times throughout the movie. They again did a good job with the tying Aron’s mental state to the music, and this did a good job of increasing the impact of moments. But there is no true standout aspect to the music from the movie. Frankly, if someone played this movie in another room, there really would be no way of recognizing it as 127 Hours – (2010). For this reason, the Film Score receives an 8/10. And this aspect of the film is partially why the Impact score for this film was an 8/10 as well. The story of Aron Ralston is incredible. There is no doubt about that. BUT, for me, it felt quite self inflicted, and the fact he survived is incredible, but ultimately his story is not one that I see myself rewatching much. It didn’t quite impact me in a long term meaningful way, so I felt the 8/10 was appropriate. I definitely feel the movie is worth watching, but beware that there are some incredibly intense scenes that may not be great for all audiences.

– Josh