Review of "127 Hours"

While it is undeniably the best feel-good movie ever about self-amputation, "127 Hours" can also give you a serious case of the willies.

Directed and co-written by Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire") in a style that travels from ecstatic to nerve-wracking and back, this is a film about perseverance, strength and the importance of always letting people know where you're going.

But it's also a film about a guy who has to cut off his own arm with a dull knife to survive, and even though that process only takes up about five minutes of the film, it is a devastatingly intense five minutes.

Some people have fainted during the scene; others have carried it in their heads for days afterward. So be forewarned: The sound of a guy breaking his own bones to hack at his arm can linger.

That said, "127 Hours" is, for the most part, a celebration of the human spirit, that spirit in this case belonging to one Aron Ralston (actor James Franco, sure to win a best actor Oscar nomination).

Ralston is a real-life outdoors type who loves to bike and hike in remote mountainous terrain. "127 Hours" tells the story of one such adventure that went terribly wrong.

He never told anyone where he was going. He couldn't find his knife, so he set out with only a multi-use tool with a dull blade. And he ended up acting as his own ER doctor.

At first Ralston is having a blast. He runs into two comely female hikers (Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara) and leads them to an exotic underground pond and great fun is had. Boyle lets you see why Ralston adores nature.

But then Ralston heads off on his own and while crossing a crevice a rock slips; he falls down, and at the end he is trapped in a long, thin cavern, his right arm pinned hopelessly beneath a boulder.

Cool-headed, Ralston lays out his resources and plots to survive. But no matter what, he's trapped by a crushed arm in a hole in the middle of nowhere.

This obviously has the potential to become dramatically stagnant, but Boyle and Franco manage to make it entertaining. With his eternal likability and big goof attitude, Franco keeps Ralston appealing at all times, and Boyle and co-writer Simon Beaufoy offer diversions in the forms of small battles, video camera hijinks and flashbacks.

Just as things threaten to become just a bit too hallucinatory, Ralston realizes what he must do.

"127 Hours" has little on its mind beyond standing as testament to the will to survive. This is a case of man against nature, and as always, nature wins easily.

But Franco embodies that survival instinct with such mellow-dude cool, and Boyle celebrates it with such flash-dash cinematic spirit, that such a brave primal instinct suddenly seems still possible in our spoiled modern times.

"127 Hours" seems to believe that beneath it all, we remain strong. There's great optimism in this tragedy, and somehow great hope.