Gravity (2013) Review

Less is more. Well okay, almost always less is more. This is true for the 2013 film, Gravity. An  astronaut, a medical  engineer, a handful of extras, a broke down space shuttle, and a couple of air crafts leave viewers on the edge of their seats as Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) must contrive and scheme in order to launch herself from space back to earth.

"I fucking hate space," says Dr. Stone after a mess of debris forces Stone and astronaut, Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) to detach themselves from a space shuttle to escape death. Stone is pulled away from the space shuttle by gravity.  Her radio, the only source of communication, cuts in and out throwing Stone into a panic attack which gobbles up her oxygen. Just when we think gravity might take over, Kowalski finds her afloat and brings her back to base.

There's no such thing as "home base" in space, especially when the space shuttle and the handful of extras are found dead. With limited oxygen, Kowalski and Stone make it to another air craft. A cord wraps around Stone's foot causing a major catastrophe. As the plot progresses in this Science Fiction thriller, the same rope that once saves Stone's life threatens it. Trying to escape a catastrophic fire, Stone cleverly rides a fire extinguisher like a heat-seeking-missile from one space craft to another. Just when you think she might be safe to return to earth, another crisis erupts. And, the climatic approach throughout Gravity lasts until the very end, when you as the viewer, realize that after watching Gravity, a vacation from life is in order.

Gravity is an epic force of nature. It's much like Danny Boyle's (2010) 127 Hours. James Franco's character, Aron Rolston, is biking through a canyon and falls victim to a boulder in the smallest possible crack in the earth. Rolston resorts to desperate measures in order to survive. Both, Gravity and 127 Hours have simplistic story lines, but are filled with action/adventure scenarios in which the audience is left with the Oh. My. God. expression. I watch with such intensity, only to be left with an exasperation of relief at the very end. When a plot is centered around a person as the protagonist and mother nature as the antagonist, 99 percent of the time mother nature wins. What happens to those who are clumped in the one percent tile?

I'll tell you...

It drives an original masterpiece into the stratosphere begging in $55.8 million opening weekend, and ranking Gravity as the number one film in the world.