Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours movie about Aron Ralston, that selfish fool who fell down a canyon and had to chop off his own hand with a pen-knife, is horrible-horrible-horrible – so much so that it’s almost unwatchable in places.
Yet it’s also quite brilliant. James Franco is absolutely spot on as the spoilt, thoughtless, resourceful Ralston and he completely carries the film; it’s got to have been hard turning one man’s solitary ordeal in a confined space into 90 minutes of big screen cinema, but Boyle and Franco manage it – via flash backs and dreams, hallucinations and nifty survival techniques – with panache. And the pace – again bear in mind that this is about a man who’s virtually immobile – moves along with balletic briskness. It may be viscerally unpleasant but it’s really worth seeing.
You’ve gathered I’m not much of an outdoorsy person myself – mostly because I’m both lazy and a huge wuss – but Bluejohn Canyon in Utah’s Canyon Country looks spectacularly beautiful (if spectacularly unforgiving.) The Telegraph has a really good piece on it here. And with Trek America you can even hike there yourself.