127 hours

Really, 127 hours has a very simple plot.

I don't think I'm spoilering it if I say it's about a guy who gets his arm stuck in a weird accident and spends 127 hours trapped. I also don't think it's a spoiler to say how he eventually got out, but I won't in case you don't know.

Given that very simple plot, how would you go about making a film of it? You've got to portray the fact that he's there for an incredibly long time (5 and a bit days) but not be boring about it. Well, clearly you've got flashback, but you could also try to show what other people are doing - his friends, family and co-workers.

Trouble is, he didn't tell anyone where he was going, so they wouldn't have started to even miss him for a good few days (he went at the weekend) and then they'd probably have waited a while before filing a missing person's report and then it'd be a while before anyone actually started searching.

In the film he does meet to pretty girls who invite him to a party, which he obviously misses, so you could have worked that up into something, but I'm not sure how closely that reflects reality (the film is based on real life and the book about it - "between a rock and a hard place").

Also, they took the decision to focus only on him once he was trapped. Now they do utilise flashbacks and hallucinations, but the point is there were no other real-word characters in the film after he got trapped.

The point I'm making is that while the whole film has an inherently tense structure, because it was such a long time it could have been horribly boring. What saves it is clearly the fact that he didn't give up and constantly tried to free himself.

And that works because the central performance by James Franco is really convincing. You really feel like he gives it his all in trying to escape and you really go through the highs and lows with him. And there are highs and lows - little moments of joy he experiences and some surprisingly comedic stuff.

Now while I'm sure it's not 100% accurate to the real world, they're quite clear in the excellent commentary that the dialogue is based on real stuff and captures the spirit of things if not the exact occurrences (it couldn't be 127 hours long, after all).

Also, interestingly, chunks of it were actually recorded. The real guy - Aron - was somewhat of a pioneer in that he used to record himself doing the extreme sports stuff he used to get up to. That's quite common nowadays, but back in the early 2000's people weren't really doing it, although new compact digital cameras were just starting to make an appearance.

I have to say I really enjoyed the film. It was pitched just right and it's very clever how they put it together.