SALT LAKE CITY — If you see "127 Hours," it would be a good idea if you don't go alone.
I don't say this merely as a predictable pun, given that Aron Ralston would likely never have had to cut off his arm in southeastern Utah's Bluejohn Canyon if he'd gone hiking with a companion or, at the very least, told someone where he was off to.
As it was, he was stuck for five days and seven hours in a place as remote as remote gets — some 50 miles of red dirt southeast of Hanksville, a town most Utahns already associate with the middle of nowhere. As Ralston says in "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," the book he wrote in 2004 about his ordeal, "This is Abbey's country, the red wasteland beyond the end of the roads."
I might have liked the movie better if I hadn't read the book, which I thought was five-stars brilliant. Ralston wrote it — alone — and in it presents a compelling self-portrait of himself as a loner, over-achiever, obsessively fit and rather brilliantly resourceful sort of guy who would cut off his right arm if he had to to save his life.
Going into Salt Lake's Broadway Theatre Friday night for the movie's Utah opening, I wondered how they would handle Ralston's version of his story on the big screen.
Not very well, it turned out, although in fairness they didn't really try. Director Danny Boyle, the man who did "Slumdog Millionaire," went instead with the Hollywood version, adding fictional scenes, creating or enhancing characters and producing humor and glamour as deemed necessary.
But they did avoid adding any car chase scenes or religious extremists who scheme to destroy the world.
I read an online interview in which Ralston says he's fine with the movie. But it took some selling on Boyle's part. When Boyle and Ralston first met to discuss the possibility of a movie in 2006, their vision of how it should be presented was so far apart they parted ways.
The two got back together for more talks after "Slumdog" won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2009 and Ralston came around to Boyle's less accurate, more creative way of thinking.
"I really appreciate what the film does. Danny's driving motivation behind this is to make this superhuman act into a human-relatable experience, that any of us would do this," Ralston told the Toronto Star.
In keeping with the blend of reality and Photoshop reality, the movie was filmed in two Utah locations: in Bluejohn Canyon itself and in a Sugar House movie set made up to look like Bluejohn Canyon.
In its early rounds of film festivals and art houses, "127 Hours," which cost $20 million to make, is racking up rave reviews and the movie, Boyle and Franco are all being touted as 2011 Oscar contenders, mirroring the same route "Slumdog Millionaire," produced on a $15 million shoestring budget, took two years ago en route to eight Academy Awards.
Much of the buzz is due to the movie's climax, which brings us back to that warning about not seeing it alone.
More than a few people have fainted during the part where you know who does you know what.
When we saw this scene at the Broadway, I watched one woman bolt from her seat and wobble up the aisle toward the exit. And my wife finally found something positive about the 6-foot-4 guy sitting in the seat in front of her.
Give Hollywood its due. Even when you know what's going to happen and they know you know what's going to happen, that's when they shine.
Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com.