Survival tale based on a true story of Aaron Ralston, a mountaineer whose arm was caught in a fallen boulder while rock climbing in a remote crevice in the desert. When he realizes that no one knows where he is, and no one will find him, he will die unless he can cut off his arm to escape. It is a riveting story that takes place virtually entirely in one simple location where Aaron deals with his dilemma. Aided by a few flashbacks and video recordings, Aaron faces the consequences of his own solitary existence. He was such a loner that he didn’t tell anyone where he was going. He didn’t answer his mother’s phone call because he was too focused on leaving to bother. So his personal journey of examining his life leads him to realize how he needs people more than he realized and this dilemma is a direct result of his own selfish solitariness. We need others.
One dishonesty of the story is that in this entire journey of facing death, Aaron is never depicted as thinking about God and his ultimate destiny. I understand that Aaron in real life is a Christian, so this is particularly manipulative of not being true to his spiritual journey. But even if he was not a Christian, it just doesn’t ring true that someone with that time on their hands, facing death, would not even spend a moment considering God and his spiritual destiny. It leaves one empty in an otherwise riveting account.