 It's not a good story unless it has some self-sacrifice. Hey guys, a little bit of a random review today, but I just finished the audio book Between a Rock and a Hard Place, with a story about Aaron Ralston, the mountain climber who became trapped by a boulder in the Utah desert and had to cut off his own arm. I decided to re-watch the movie 127 Hours. Now I can't believe this movie is almost 10 years old. It came out in 2010. I watched it in January of 2011. I really do appreciate this story, not just the movie in particular, but Aaron Ralston's story itself. I can't believe it took me this long to actually listen to the book or just like look at the guy's actual biography. This is one of my favorite films. This is one of my favorite stories and I always love having the conversation with people about if you had the training, if you had to know how, if you were in the same situation, would you be able to do what Aaron did? And that's something that's always stuck with me. This guy's personal challenge, this absolutely incredible journey that he went through and the process that he went through to pretty much convince himself to cut off his own arm is astounding. After having listened to the book, having Aaron, who actually narrates the book himself, which is actually pretty cool, describe the whole situation. I went back and watched this movie. When this film came out, it was my favorite movie of the year. I had such an emotional journey with this film. At the end of the film, when he is picked up by the helicopter, I legitimately cried in the theater. I was just like, whoa, does it still stand up 10 years later almost? I would say yeah. This is one of Danny Boyle's best movies. He definitely provides a unique form of visual style to this film. In fact, it actually has two different cinematographers, which is rare when you look at films. You usually see multiple editors, multiple writers, but never multiple cinematographers. And you can see that there's different means of how this film is shot in terms of not just watching what's happening with Aaron, but also these shots of public life. And what we're seeing is the film is representing Aaron kind of just as a regular day person, kind of not really caring about the events of what other people are their day in life. He more so just lives for the adventure, but is kind of hesitant of responsibilities or family contact. He wasn't exactly like this in the book. He describes himself as having a little bit more of a kind of relationship with his family, but he definitely gave up his career to become a mountain climber. He had a pretty solid job at Dell and then he just decided to quit it because he wanted to do a huge expedition of climbing all these mountains in the Utah area. In the movie, they make it seem that he doesn't say where he goes all the time. And he does. In real life, he did just he was very not too on the ball with it when he went this time, mainly because his trip to Utah was a afterthought. He had already done an expedition previous and he decided to swing to Utah on the way back home. But aside from that, it works in form of the narrative. It helps you kind of relate more to Aaron and it helps you kind of bring yourself into his character. James Franco does a fantastic job as Aaron. He adds this humanity and this realism, especially later on in the days after he's been trapped by this boulder for several days and he starts to have the hallucinations and he basically starts to wake out a little bit. You really see both from his acting, from his emotions, from his movements and fantastic makeup on him, just the absolute carnage that is happening on his body. Because while standing still, his body is basically deteriorating from the lack of water, the lack of food, and the fact that his arm is slowly deteriorating under this boulder. While the film does almost take place entirely in this boulder, Danny Boyle is still able to give us plenty of angles in around the rock, around Aaron. Something that I didn't realize entirely at first, but after reading the book and it's explained, he starts to have these hallucinations of his past, of his family, previous lovers and moments of his life and in those memories, he's a passive observer. He doesn't really do anything. He's just standing and observing. He can't move. In Aaron's story, when he was experiencing these hallucinations, he literally couldn't move. He just said he was a passive observer. However, when he sees the vision of his son, that was the first time that he interacted with one of these hallucinations. And that's what happens in the film, and it's why he was motivated to survive. This vision of his future son is what motivated him to get out of this rock. The soundtrack of this film was also incredibly well done. A. H. Raman, Ramon, I apologize if I say that wrong. He provides a soundtrack that's so goddamn good, and it used to be a music that I used to fall asleep to. Also, I would run to. The music of when he was cutting off his arm is so well done. It's repeated three times throughout the movie, but it changes each time. And there's these little tidbits in the film that when he has to cut the nerve in his arm and it makes that noise, Aaron in the book describes his nerve looking like that of a guitar string. And when it pulled it, it would have this loud banging sort of fire sensation when he would try to cut it. So that's what that bang noise is when he's trying to cut off the nerve. That part itself is just incredible to watch. It's very kind of gut wrenching, and they show a lot more than I thought they would. But I was so happy with the level of detail in this scene and that it was kept in because it made it an R rated movie because of this one amputation scene. Aside from that, it's not really. You would think it's almost PG-13 up until this point. So the music, the acting, the camera style, the directing are all phenomenal. If there's anything that to be taken away with maybe the visual has degraded over the while, there are a few moments in the movie that were added purely for dramatic purposes. Him meeting up with Kate Mara and that other girl and going into that, well, that never happened. But Aaron understood why, mainly for patting, adding some extra time, as well as just kind of making Aaron showing off his adventure, the adventurous side of him. In the book, he gives tidbits and kind of talks back about certain adventures he went on with either his dad or his other hiking buddies. So in the film, they condense it kind of into this one little part. The ending of the film still is one of the best parts of the whole movie. After he cuts his arm off and he's slowly guiding out of the canyon, it's such a resounding sort of scene with the music was playing in the background. That song in particular, I would listen to that every time I would finish the sun run. Every time I would cross the finish line, I tried to cross over at the crescendo of the song because that part is just so much emotion in that scene. And it's funny enough too, is that there's an alternative ending. There's a little bit more time added. They play throughout the entire song, and they actually talk about more of what happened with Aaron after he got out of the canyon, kind of talking about his the relationship with the media, what happened with his family afterwards, and talking more so about just how he got out of the canyon. And I actually really like that alternative ending. I know that the one that we got in the film is still really good, but the alternative one does add a little bit more layer to it. And it is something that I could have taken if it was in the original cut of the film. I'm happy with how the movie ends, but if this alternative ending had been in it, it's a little bit longer. It doesn't kind of give that emotional effect as much as the film version does. But in terms of a storytelling perspective, I do understand what the alternative ending was trying to do. In the end, I love this movie. It is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's one of Danny Boyle's best movies he's made in a long time. It just shows how versatile of a director this guy is. He never makes the same movie twice, and which is why I was really excited to see him do the New James Bond film, but he has stepped away from that, which is unfortunate. But otherwise, fantastic acting, fantastic music, fantastic directing, fantastic story. It is one of the best movies in my collection. And that's why I'm going to give 127 hours a seven out of seven. If you've never seen the movie or if you've never read Aaron Ralston's story, I would definitely suggest you do. It is one of the most incredible stories of human resilience and survival that is out there. I had this fascination for a little while where I was reading books about mountaineering accidents or mountaineering experiences, and Aaron is definitely one of those stories that I will hold dear to myself as this guy is a very, very interesting figure. Anyways, guys, I hope you enjoyed this review. I know it's a very long one, a very detailed one, but I really wanted to talk about this movie because it is one of my favorites. It is an incredible story. I can't believe that it's almost 10 years old. Holy shit. Time has flown by. Anyways, guys, I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did, leave a like and if you're interested in more, maybe subscribe. Otherwise, I'll see you guys next time.