127 HOURS
A friend once described Danny Boyle as making “commercials for life.” He meant it in a bad way, but I’m inclined to be more generous. We talk of works of art having cathartic qualities, but in Boyle’s films the catharsis is usually visible onscreen: in Ewan McGregor’s bright, liberated smile at the end of 1996’s Trainspotting; in the strangely communal, redemptive coda to 2000’s underrated The Beach — and of course, that buoyant song-and-dance number at the end of Slumdog Millionaire. Even though 127 Hours is in some ways Boyle’s most harrowing film yet — the real-life tale of Aron Ralston (James Franco, finally living up to about a decade’s worth of hype), a rock climber who got pinned by a boulder and had to saw his arm off to survive — it ironically might also be his most jubilant.
Deliriously stylized (but of course) and genuinely poignant, Ralston’s journey is one in which his frantic zest for life is soon revealed to not be much of a life at all. In his own way, he’s cut himself off so much from the world that nobody knows where he is: by disconnecting himself from his arm, ironically enough, he reconnects to the world. No less affectingly than Trainspotting’s bottomed-out junkie hero, Franco’s climber reaches the same conclusion as the other renewed lost souls in Boyle’s ever-expanding gallery: Choose life. (Opens Wednesday at Green Hills) —BILGE EBIRI
WELCOME TO THE RILEYS
Welcome to the Rileys feels like a put-on, like somebody’s idea of how a hard-hitting indie drama should look and sound and feel. James Gandolfini, giving what may be the first performance in film history consisting entirely of nostril-flaring, is a dour businessman on a trip to New Orleans who befriends a young stripper (Kristen Stewart, who says “cooter” a lot) and starts to take care of her; like pretty much every man in every movie who meets a whore with a heart of gold, he just wants to talk. Gandolfini’s paternal-protection act takes an even stranger turn when his wife, Melissa Leo, who has been catatonic with grief back home, unexpectedly shows up. The couple, it turns out, once lost a daughter, and they now enter into an unusual familial relationship with this troubled daughter of the night.
At this point Welcome to the Rileys threatens to come into its own: One wishes director Jake Scott (who, back in what must have been another life, directed the underrated techno-swashbuckling period epic Plunkett & Macleane) had found a way to spend more time telling the story of this makeshift family instead of the clichéd nonsense that builds up to it. There’s an idea here, but it’s been slathered and hidden in layers and layers of festival-friendly goo. (Opens Wednesday at The Belcourt) —BILGE EBIRI
THE NEXT THREE DAYS
Even though writer-director Paul Haggis (Crash) keeps violence and car crashes to a respectable minimum, it's hard not to feel midway through his taut, polished and solidly performed action yarn that you've seen a lot of it before — and that’s even if you’re not familiar with its source material, the 2007 French thriller Pour Elle (Anything for Her). Russell Crowe brings depth and punch to the role of a docile family man whose placid life ends when his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is convicted of murder. After three increasingly despairing years, he consults an expert on prison escapes (Liam Neeson in a brief but juicy supporting role) and plots to bust her out himself, defying her misgivings, his own lack of action-hero credentials — and the very real threat of losing their child forever.
Haggis ratchets up the tension by giving Crowe a cunning adversary — an equally sharp cop (Lennie James) who plays Gerard to Crowe's nimble-witted Fugitive — and by springing a few welcome twists, most shrewdly capitalizing on Crowe’s inexperience and quick thinking. If the movie remains more proficient and diverting than genuinely thrilling, you can’t blame Haggis’ fine cast, including Banks, Olivia Wilde — and especially Brian Dennehy, whose age may have taken him out of the running for leads, but who can still deliver a sneering dismissal or combative assertion with authority. The movie didn’t fare well last weekend at the box office, thanks to a certain boy wizard — but it’s the kind of smoothly crafted entertainment that’ll enjoy a long life on DVD and cable. (Now playing) —RON WYNN
