"Oops."
It's always tough (I would guess) to make a suspenseful movie based on a real-life event. You have to get the audience invested in the characters and create tension regarding their fates, even though they probably know how it's all going to turn out. Some films do this really well. Titanic is a great example (assuming you like it, which I do). Bryan Singer's Valkyrie (despite having a few substantial flaws) maintained a pretty good level of tension throughout. Danny Boyle's difficulties with this were compounded by the fact that most of the film is one guy stuck in one place. The film is at the same time, an obvious sell and a difficult task. Fair warning, this review will contain spoilers for real life starting with the next paragraph.
James Franco plays Aron Ralston who, in April of 2003 was hiking the canyons outside Moab, Utah when he fell into a narrow crevasse and trapped his arm under a boulder. Ralston remained trapped there for over 5 days, slowly dying of thirst and exposure until he finally cut off his own arm below the elbow with a multi-tool and walked through the desert until he found rescue. Serious shit. The film is pretty much a one man show, but it also features Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn as two girls he meets shortly before his accident and (via flashback) Treat Williams as his father, Lizzy Caplan as his sister and Clemence Poesy as his ex-girlfriend.
As I said above, it's tough making a movie when the ending is a truthful, foregone conclusion, but Boyle ratchets up the tension nicely at the beginning, showing Ralston as a goofy, go-for-broke adrenaline junkie, the kind of guy who would be weird and off-putting if he wasn't so much damn fun to hang out with. He spends the first fifteen minutes (aka one of the longest and most effective pre-title sequences I've ever seen) living a charmed life of off-road adventure in which he meets and charms hot women with his knowledge of secret underground hot springs. It's a succinct, but effective set-up to his character and not much of a stretch for Franco, who's pretty much always charming and likable. It also allows Danny Boyle to show off the snazzy split-screen camera angles and blaring world/techno music that won him the Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire.
Once Ralston is trapped, Boyle dials back the directorial tricks, but the camera never remains fixed, showing Ralston's predicament from every angle as he tries to figure his way out of an impossbile situation. Some of the moves seem flashy (the zoom inside Ralston's camera as he rewinds footage from earlier; the sped-up tracking shot from his position to his car 17 miles away where he left behind a sweating bottle of gatorade) and I suppose they are, but their extremity keeps you right along side Ralston as he combs back over everything he could have done differently and slowly becomes fixiated on basic necessities that he sorely lacks. Boyle also makes the smart move of having Ralston lay out everything he has on him from the get-go, getting the audience on the same page and circumventing any criticisms of "why doesn't he have this" or "why didn't he do that". He's also extremely economical with his use of flashbacks. They're often connected to what Ralston is thinking/doing at the moment (his parents buying him his first video camera as a kid, etc.) and usually provide some welcome levity. Eventually they begin to blend with Ralston's hallucinations and fantasies in some pretty clever ways. Toward the end, the flashbacks become a little too pointed in their meaning (a flashback to him breaking up with his girlfriend as he's starting lose hope, complete with her telling him that he's going to end up alone), but definitely more hits than misses.
As great a job as Danny Boyle does, this movie really rests on the shoulders of James Franco. As I said before, the guy is nothing if not likable, and his inital goofy, over-the-top persona ultimately gives way to something much more relatable as the film goes on. It's fun seeing him impress himself with little feats of ingenuity (I was particularly fond of him using his climbing harness to give him support while he slept) and he does a great job of immersing the viewer in the bizarre sort of routine he develops for himself while he's trapped. From the odd, endearing pleasure of the 15 minutes of sunlight he gets every morning to the desperate rationing of his water, Franco sells every moment of the film and makes the character a really easy one to hang out with, despite his dire circumstances. How great he is, combined with this being the kind of role that the Academy creams their pants over, makes Franco a pretty solid bet for a Best Actor nomination this year. He really shows his stuff toward the end of the film, when his mind starts to work against him. There's a scene involving the footage he took with the two girls he met that should be creepy and sad, but Franco manages to make it bittersweet and understandable nonetheless.
On a final note, I've read reports of people vomiting/fainting/running from the theatre screaming when the final act kicks into gear. Those people are pussies. While the sequence is grueling, I don't really understand how you couldn't be completely rivited by it. Boyle manages to not shy away from the gore, but not exploit it either. By the end of the film, you feel like you owe it to yourself and Ralston to stick with him through what has to be one of the hardest fucking things anyone can ever choose to do. Don't be a pussy.
As I said, this is certain to be an Oscar contender this year, so if that's the kind of thing you like to be up on, definitely see this flick. Also see it because it's great. Now I just need to get to Black Swan....
UP NEXT: Black Swan, at some point. And those Kurasawa flicks, eventually. My Netflix account is becoming tragically stagnant.
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