**Taking a break, a shopkeeper soaks up the Shinjuku street scene. Tokyo, Japan. Photo credit: Joel Katz**

Japan - taking politeness and perfectionism to a whole new level

December 27, 2014

TOKYO – We arrive at Shibuya Subway Station, and I can’t find my metro pass anywhere. From my puffy jacket's pockets I pluck out a crumpled-up city map and a wrapper for a ‘candied squid snack’ - but no subway ticket.

It’s gone, probably stuck to the bottom of a salary man’s shoe, or swirling around in a train-generated vortex.

I mime my story to a station guard as my red-faced girlfriend ducks behind a vending machine selling a curious range of drinks, like Pocari Sweat and Hot Calpis (pronounced cow piss).

“Sorry. So sorry,” I say to the guard.

“Sumimasen – so sorry,” he replies, bowing his head so low his hat almost topples off.

Like everyone else, I know how this movie ends.

And it's just really gross. But kind of cool too.

It's based on a guy called Aron Ralston, a young adrenalin junkie who goes canyoning in the wilds of Utah, solo - without telling a soul.

Spoiler alert: early on in the film Aron, played by James Franco, dislodges a boulder, plunges down a crevice, and gets pinned by the same rock.

And that rock ain't going nowhere, no-how.

Directed by Danny Boyle of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire fame, the film is based on Ralston's book Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

A title that sums up his gory tale, and the movie's story arc.

Boyle is awesome at branding his films with powerful imagery geared towards a hyperactive media-crazed instant gratification audience.

From the kick-off the movie goes full-throttle as Aron recklessly sets off on his adventure: hurtling down the highway in a beat up car while his headphones blast pulsing beats.

“Boyle has a real knack for branding his films with powerful imagery geared towards a hyperactive media-crazed instant gratification audience.”

Within the same heartbeat he's on his mountain bike as the stunningly bleak mars-like Utah landscape flashes by.

He meets some babes. Shows them an subterranean lake only accessible by slipping down a groin-tinglingly narrow rift. Then he's off, pumped on nature, fresh air and the rush of living life to its fullest...

Then Aron slips. He's now trapped.

Frozen in time and space by nature: the drug that has always pushed him to dizzying heights.

Camera zooms on Aron's stunned face and the Movie title appears for the first time: 127 Hours.

Brake is applied heavily now for momentum-loving viewers - or is it?

Sometimes this film was hard to watch (and for a few nerve-snapping moments - unbearable).

Franco does great credit to Aron's gritty determination, and Boyle doesn't rely on sentimentality or melodrama.

It's like a companion piece to Sean Penn's Into the Wild, but thankfully here the hero survives.

Like Into the Wild's care-free hero, for Aron it's the people in his life, and the premonition of his future son, which gives him the courage and down-right ballsy-ness to, literally, disarm himself to break free.

So yeah - he gruesomely and noisily hacks off his own limb. But as he's scrambles out of the crevasse, one arm down, he looks back at the rock and says 'Thank you'.

Then he snaps a selfie of his dismembered hand with his membered hand.

Through the entire film Aron stays level-headed and never loses his great love of nature and even the very rock that so nearly entombed him.

This is a powerful film, and a tribute to the importance of human love and the brutal and unforgiving beauty of the wild.

“Through the entire film Aron stays level-headed and never loses his great love of nature and even the very rock that so nearly entombed him. ”