While exploring a deep and narrow canyon, he ends up slipping, inadvertently pulling a large boulder down with him. It wedges between the walls of the canyon, pinning his lower arm to one side, thus trapping him there. After yelling for help does no good as no one is within miles and maybe even more, he accesses his situation and then tries to figure out how to free himself.

Although he doesn't give up, he realizes that his small amount of food and water won't support him for long, while his injured arm isn't helping matters. Accordingly, he uses his video camera to leave messages for his parents should be not make it but be found sometime in the future. As the hours and then days pass, he has flashbacks to childhood memories and other past events, as well as hallucinations, all of which eventually lead to a spiritual rebirth of sorts for him.

Newly determined, he then must decide if he has the resolve to go to extreme measures to give himself the chance of surviving.

In it, a disgraced and heroin-addicted doctor finds himself stuck on a remote Pacific island. With no apparent chance of rescue and growing hungrier by the day, he makes the gut-wrenching and stomach-churning decision to start amputating parts of his body (starting with his foot below his badly broken ankle, which is where the idea takes shape) and using those as food. The overriding theme of the tale was to what extent someone would go in order to survive.

All of which brings us to "127 Hours," the latest film from award-winning director Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire"). But instead of being based on King's work, this story -- of an adrenaline junkie who ends up with his arm pinned under a boulder in a deep and narrow canyon in the middle of nowhere, and thus facing some tough choices - stems from a true-life event. Back in 2003, outdoor enthusiast Aron Ralston found himself in that very predicament and, forced with no better alternative, did the unthinkable to survive (but thankfully didn't have to turn self-cannibalistic in the process).

On paper, the film might seem fairly similar to this year's little seen thriller, "Buried," where Ryan Reynolds played a man who woke up to find himself buried in a coffin and thus forced to figure out why and how to extricate himself. While not perfect, it was an impressive directorial exercise in that the camera never left that space (no flashbacks, no shots of worried people back home, etc.).

Upon hearing that Ralston's harrowing experience was being recreated on film, I pondered whether Boyle would try to do the same thing (after the obligatory setup of how the character got into some a predicament). Instead, Boyle and longtime co-screenwriter Simon Beaufoy -- who adapt Ralston's 2004 autobiography "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" -- have turned this into something of a tale of a spiritual awakening and then odyssey, all brought to life by a terrific and moving performance by James Franco as the lead.

Yes, there are many views of him playing Ralston trying to deal with his physical "inconvenience." And yes, there's the grisly material that most everyone knows or quickly figures out will be coming and thus will likely draw most of the attention (when not having many viewers turning away from the screen to avoid seeing a fairly graphic recreation of the pivotal event).

But Boyle and company use various flashbacks, hallucinations and Ralston documenting his ordeal via his video camera to turn this into something more than just a dramatic thriller. Faced with likely death, the character experiences a transformation and thus grows as a spiritual being (at one point, he states "This rock has been waiting for me its entire life"). It's an award-caliber performance by Franco who, like Reynolds and Tom Hanks (in "Castaway") before him, must carry most of the weight on his shoulders. While many viewers will be gripped by the "I couldn't do that" material and thus rejoice the physical escape, the far more powerful -- and surprisingly emotional aspect -- is his moment of freedom from his former internal ways.

Along the way, the imaginative director might create another feeling in some viewers and that's some degree of queasiness due to the near constantly moving camera and various highly stylized and sometimes jerky shots. He's used the same before in past films (including "Slumdog"), but here it seems like more of an obvious attempt to jazz up the otherwise obviously staid locale that comprises most of the film. It's not awful (unless you're prone to motion sickness), but such visuals do stand out a bit and thus draw too much attention to themselves.

Even so, Franco's performance will likely divert your attention and keep you captivated from start to finish. While I wasn't as completely impressed with this film compared to some of Boyle's past offerings (and especially his last one), it's still quite good. "127 Hours" rates as a 6.5 out of 10.