127 Hours

Directed by: Danny Boyle
Written by: Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy
Full credits at IMDb

You know what I saw in 127 Hours? An Iraq War allegory! The crazy part is I'm totally serious. I mean, c'mon, it takes place in a desert, in April 2003 (roughly six weeks after George Bush Jr.'s invasion of Iraq began) and is basically a story about American arrogance getting its due: like Donald Rumsfeld and Christopher McCandless, Ralston totally underestimates a foreign power (nature), and receives cruel comeuppance in return (for what he calls his "supreme selfishness.") It's like a microcosmic form of the battering America is still taking over in the Middle East. I also got the sense that the filmmakers were suggesting that the reason the U.S. can't win the War on Terror is because it doesn't have the balls to cut off its own arm? (Its residents won't even drive their cars less!) Anyway, you could see Ralston's story as a triumph of the human spirit, I guess, but as a battle against Nature it's a pretty Pyrrhic victory, eh?

Keep reading my conversation with Benjamin Sutton at The L Magazine


Watch the trailer: