Review: Henry's Crime

There is a moment in Henry's Crime when Vera Farmiga is teaching Keanu Reeves how to act. He delivers a line from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, terribly, and after some gentle coaching from her repeats the line... with exactly the same delivery. A smile breaks out over Famigo's face as she realises that her struggling play has found it's lead. "Wow" she gasps "You're a natural" leaving Keanu smiling and the audience puzzled over what exactly happened.

This may give you an idea of why Henry's Crime doesn't work.

The premise of this baffling mess is that Henry (Reeves), having been sent to prison for a bank robbery he didn't commit, decides that if he "did the time he may as well do the crime". After discovering an old tunnel running from the bank to the next door playhouse, he enlists the help of fellow jailbird Max (James Caan) and the two decide the only way to access this tunnel is to get Henry the lead in The Cherry Orchard. I'm sure you can see the cracks in this already and the cracks start and stop with Reeves.

Review: 127 Hours

In May of 2003, while on a hiking trip in Canyonlands, Utah, 28 year old mountain climber Aron Ralston slipped into a canyon and found his arm stuck beneath a boulder. Ralston spent five days with his arm trapped, trying every possible way to move the giant rock. On the fifth day, when it became clear that it wasn't going anywhere Ralston made a life changing decision and amputated his arm with the blunt pocket knife he had been using to chip away at the boulder.

That a film was made of Ralston's horrific tale is a given, that it is possibly the best film of last year is utterly remarkable.

Hollywood loves a real life tale of survival. A hundred projects to produce a film of Ralston's ordeal were probably greenlit five minutes after he was rescued. Fortunately, the project that made it into production, based on Ralston's autobiography 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place' was produced and directed by Danny Boyle.

Danny Boyle hasn't made a bad film. He is a fearless director, seemingly determined to conquer every genre. See how casually he created one of the best British horrors in recent memory with 28 Days Later. See how easily he turned Sunshine (a run of the mill "let's use nukes to save the Earth" story) into a beautiful and compelling Sci-Fi thriller. Now he tries his hand at a biography, and while 127 hours may be the smallest film Boyle has tackled, from a story telling point of view it must have been the most challenging.