Preview review: Danny Boyle spends ‘127 Hours’ with James Franco
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It was only two years ago that “Slumdog Millionaire” swept the Academy Awards, claiming eight Oscars, including one for best director Danny Boyle. That’s a fact, it seems, Fox Searchlight doesn’t want audiences to forget.
The new teaser trailer for “127 Hours,” Boyle’s first film after “Slumdog,” opens by hyping the director’s many credits: “Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later,” “The Beach.” Set to music with a strong drumbeat, the trailer’s opening definitely has a “Slumdog” vibe to it -- lots of fast-paced edits, wide shots of impressive scenery. “This fall,” the preview touts, Boyle “takes us on a ride beyond our imagination -- and it’s true.”
That journey? It follows Aron Ralston (played by James Franco), the mountain climber who infamously got trapped under a boulder in Utah in 2003 and was forced to cut part of his arm off to escape a near-death situation.
We’ve heard that a majority of the film deals with Ralston’s frightening predicament, and the loneliness and desperation he deals with over the 127 hours he’s pinned under a rock. (And is perhaps thematically similar to the upcoming “Buried,” in which Ryan Reynolds plays a U.S. contractor who gets buried alive in a coffin in Iraq.) But you might not realize that, having only watched the movie’s trailer.
Indeed, most of the footage we see from the movie is, we’d imagine, not in line with the film’s larger tone. As Ralston, Franco comes across as an offbeat adventurer -- a dude unafraid to take risks in the dangerous outdoors, who manages to chuckle even after taking a painful-looking fall off of his bike. He’s believable in this playful goofball/stoner type of role, especially when he charms the socks off of two cute girl hikers (Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn) in need of a guide.
Watching his performance evolve as the story goes to a much darker, introspective place is something we’re looking forward to. But what has us more perplexed is how Boyle will deal with the rest of the movie, which -- as far as we can tell -- seems to take place largely inside the crevice of a rock canyon. We’re hoping that the film will take us that deep inside Ralston’s mind, too.
--Amy Kaufman
Twitter.com/AmyKinLA RECENT AND RELATED:
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