If you’re planning to go and see Danny Boyle’s new film – which closes this year’s Times bfi London Film Festival - you might want to think twice about your choice of pre-screening snack. Our advice to you is: avoid anything that might need the enhancement of ketchup. Indeed you might want to avoid food altogether because the impact of certain scenes on the first audiences to see the film, at the Toronto Film Festival last weekend, having been dramatic to say the very least.

 

Starring James Franco Boyle’s new film, 127 Hours, tells the tale of a climber who hacks off his own arm with a blunt pen-knife after it was crushed by a boulder. Leaving nothing to the imagination, Boyle give us the amputation in realistic and gory detail – the graphic nature of which has resulted in three people fainting and one experiencing a seizure.

 

However, those with a knowledge of Boyle’s films will be aware that he revels in the grittiest of scenes – Trainspotting had some truly gruesome moments, as you’d expect in a film about heroine addiction - and even ‘feel good’ Slumdog was difficult to watch at times with its depiction of extreme poverty and violence. 

 

127 Hours is based on Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the true story of climber Aron Ralston’s horrific accident.

 

Check out the trailer: