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100127 Hours -- just like "Slumdog Millionaire" -- is a masterful slice of four-star cinema, featuring an irresistible performance by James Franco, breathtaking cinematography, and the kind of deep, searching soul that is absent from so much of what comes out of Hollywood.
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100Is the film watchable? Yes, compulsively.
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100Only a truly visionary filmmaker could take a story largely set in a cramped canyon and give it a sense of openness and hope.
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100Like all great movies, 127 Hours takes us on a memorable journey. Which is not easy when 90 percent of the movie takes place with a virtually immobile hero in a very cramped setting.
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100Mr. Boyle has a knack for tackling painful, violent or unpleasant subjects with unremitting verve and unstoppable joie de vivre.
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100For a story about a man who cannot move, the ordeal unfolds at a pace that keeps you breathless.
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100Paradoxically, this is not a tale about summoning inner strength, but about shedding pride. Sometimes, there's no choice.
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100A true-life adventure that turns into a one-man disaster movie - and the darker it gets, the more enthralling it becomes.
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91It's gory and gut-wrenching but strangely life-affirming.
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90127 Hours is based on Ralston's memoir, and it's a really good movie because director Danny Boyle is a genius.
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90This is a survival manual turned into an existential prison-break movie; it cuts deep and, at its ecstatic climax, soars high.
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90It's exciting, stirring, often funny, sometimes lyrical and unusually thoughtful. And, with that one egregious exception, genuinely pleasurable.
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90In the end, 127 Hours is one man's incredible, unforgettable journey; it took the extraordinary alchemy of Boyle and Franco to also make it ours.
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90All of the key creative personnel contribute to the movie's nail-biting tension and unexpectedly moving finale. Jon Harris's editing is matchless, and Rahman's score effectively heightens the emotion. Ultimately, however, it is the talents of Boyle and Franco that sock this movie home.
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89Danny Boyle's 127 Hours is the calm, cool, and tear-your-hair-out exciting mirror image of Tony Scott's bland and formulaic "Unstoppable."
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88Although Ralston's act of desperation is admittedly difficult to watch, viewers who might avoid the film out of squeamishness would be depriving themselves of one of the year's most exhilarating cinematic experiences.
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88The scene appalls but doesn't offend; it's a "Worst-Case-Scenario Survival Handbook'' nightmare that resonates on the metaphysical level.
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88Like the A.R. Rahman score that drives the movie, the triumphant 127 Hours pays fitting tribute to Aron by being thrillingly alive.
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88It's a coming-of-age story - blunt, mythic, gut-wrenching.
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83Before it traps Ralston, 127 Hours gives us ample evidence of his energy, zest and boyish charm and wit.
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80A surprisingly fun, effervescent against-the-odds drama that offers an upbeat moral without the usual punishing survival-story clichés. Not for the faint-hearted, mind.
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80But damned if Boyle, with the help of his star, doesn't make the experience almost… cheerful.
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Nov 2, 201080As Boyle's film flits from the real world-the heavy reality of a man in a canyon, pinned, near death-to the world of dreams and delusions, so Franco's performance transforms, encompassing both universes.
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80With a tour-de-force performance from James Franco and an imaginative shooting style that relies on two cameras and inventive angles, what could have been static and deadly dull comes blazingly to life in this powerful and compelling story of one man's will to survive.
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80Franco is up to every bit of Boyle's challenge, capturing Aron's transition from clownish outdoorsman and party boy to an introspective chronicler of his own impending demise and a visionary lunatic.
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Oct 27, 201080While Franco can sometimes be a wild card, getting increasingly self-conscious with recent roles, his take on Ralston feels both credible and compelling; few actors could have made us care so much, or disappeared so completely into the role.
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75This is a deeply inspirational movie about the human spirit's refusal to give up, but it is also a portrait of a man too much in love with life to let go without a fight.
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75This is a fascinating story of determination and survival that deserves to be told. It is ultimately uplifting but it's tough going to get to that point.
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Nov 11, 201070Aside from an exhilarating opening and a gruesome climax, the movie isn't all that rich emotionally; all the visual razzle-dazzle winds up serving a pat lesson about people needing other people.
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70Even by my super-wimp standards, Aron's exit is surprisingly coy, coming from a filmmaker who gets his kicks from goosing the hell out of his audiences.
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70Boyle's skill at wringing physical and emotional reactions from his audience is impressive; watching 127 Hours is, as intended, an experience of grueling intensity.
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70Once Franco's on his own, everything is played across this terrific actor's deceptively goofy face.
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70The movie is best when it calms down and concentrates on the sinister peculiarities of the experience, and when it focuses on Franco's face. [8 Nov. 2010, p . 93]
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67As a testament to positive thinking, 127 Hours will probably stand as a ringing affirmation for reckless survivalists. For those of us not so affirmed, Boyle's paean to heroism – a better title for it might have been "A Farewell to Arm" – is merely the best gross-out music video ever made.
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67Worse still, all that introspection adds up to a disappointingly shallow accumulation of regrets and life lessons, none of them surprising. After the adrenaline rush, 127 Hours turns to vapor.
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63Shiver-making moments aside, in a important way 127 Hours suffers from the filmmaker's lack of nerve, a reluctance to let the audience taste Ralston's dread and the expectation of a slow, absurd death.
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63127 Hours never calms down. You suspect you're only getting half the truth of what this ordeal must've been like.
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50127 Hours, about an unimaginably unbearable experience, is pretty much an unbearable experience of its own. And yet, it must be said, it's exceptionally well made.