Hours (2013)

Beautiful, moving film.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This movie is terrible. The plot is rediculous and unrealistic. No hospital would evacuate and leave a baby alone, how did criminals get to the floor if the floors below were flooded? This movie is a nurse's nightmare! Changing the IV bag with dirty hands and contaminating it and no baby can live off of plain IV fluids! A preemie would never have a heartrate of 73 and a BP of 121/80, and where did some random dog come from? I love how the protagonist is white and all of the criminals are minorities and there were black people on the roof shooting at the rescue helicopter, the hospital lacks supplies which would never be the case in real life, the baby starts breathing right as he breaks the battery which is so predictable it's laughable, it doesn't represent new Orleans which is majority black but the hospital was full of majority white people, the black doctor abandoned him but the white nurse stayed, oh my gosh this movie is so bad I am angry at myself for wasting so much of my life watching this crap. The dialogalog is boring and lackluster and the acting is terrible. Paul rest his sould can't carry a movie alone. There's no emotional connection to the baby and there's so many holes in the plot it's embarrassing. And instead of the flashbacks they should have just put a scene with just words saying they couldn't think of anything else. All the great reviews are just sympathy reviews I'm sorry but this is the second worse movie I've ever seen next to Uncle Sam where the man who was thrown in the air still had the string attached .

Sometimes in cinema less is more. Robert Redford showcased this in 2013´s All Is Lost and Paul Walker does in Hours filmed in the same year and of course being Walker´s final film. I would not call Hours a catastrophe film. Hurricane Katrina is over and it´s aftermath begins very early in the film. Essentially it is a very scary and eerie survival film taking place in an empty hospital where a young fathers fights for the survival of his newborn baby against, well, all and everything fate sees fit to throw at him. The beautiful city of New Orleans is just a backdrop - the film could take place in an empty space ship for all it matters. But is it as empty as Paul Walker´s character first fears and later hopes? This is slow cinema at it´s best as the task of keeping the baby alive gets harder and the anticipation of some kind of turn of events builds up over time. That´s why it´s called Hours. Yes sir, an action film it is not. At the time many reviewers seemed to think that this was some kind of a mistake or a way for the team to make a film cheaply. Well, since then writer-director Eric Heisserer wrote Arrival, so few would think that now. He knew what he was doing. So which one is the best in the one-man-against-pretty-much-the-rest-of-the-universe genre, the Martian (2016), 127 Hours (2010), Cast Away (2000), All Is Lost already mentioned or Hours? I love them all, but somehow Hours seems to stretch it´s obviously limited budget and gives more edge-of-the-seat adrenalin per buck.

Unfortunately, films are supposed to be 90 minutes long. What you have here is a great 50-minute idea. There are two choices for the filmmaker. Make a 50-minute film (which won't qualify for most festivals and certainly not for wide release) or come up with more plot complications for your script.Some of the reviews say this isn't "realistic." They didn't pay enough attention to the news in 2005. Things like this did happen during Katrina, and they will happen again, guaranteed. People who take too much effort to keep alive get triaged and left to die. Major disasters don't come around often, and people in "civilized" countries think they are immune to this level of logistical problem, but they are not. Next 9.0 earthquake in California, it will also be this bad and worse. People will be dying in the hallways or hospital lawns, unattended, undrugged, in pain, bleeding. So that's not a problem I had with it. I believed in the realism.The real weakness is, there's really only one plot problem to be solved, and we keep getting riffs on that one thing. Watching this felt like listening to a song with only two notes...and for 90 minutes. When the dog arrives, you nearly weep in relief that it's something else (though not much of a something), but the dog doesn't get to stay around or get developed as a character. (and the baby isn't a character at all. It's a Macguffin, at best.) By the time other characters appear, you're already numb with boredom, and it's too late to save the film.But Walker's acting is good, so it deserves some stars.

It's a massive undertaking of being a sole lead of a feature film like Tom Hanks did in Castaway or James Franco in 127 hours. While not as brilliant as above, Paul Walker displayed a heartwarming and sincere performance as a father who struggles to protect his child. He was more known for starring in Fast & Furious franchise, along with many other action movies, but I feel Paul Walker had only begun to mature as an actor, he will be sorely missed.Nolah Hayes (Paul Walker) is trapped in a hospital during her wife's labor and also hurricane Katrina, a mix of excellent timing and unfortunate fate. As the others evacuate he must stay because his newborn isn't strong enough for immediate travel. It's amazing how a simple premise can be explored so well with a good performance and a concept that's easily to connect with. Walker exhibits a wide range of emotion, from his self-doubt, rejection, anger and until his eventual acceptance to his morbid situation.There's a good direction involved, as well as a couple of witty gimmicks to ensure the sense of stress, but this is practically Walker's show. Without his genuine performance, not much of the plot could've been so easily associable with the audience. If you simplify the movie, it's basically only him in a room or a building, yet it still produces tension as one is drawn to root for his character.Pacing is sometimes slow, but it's just minor humps since the movie manages to display depth of human nature when faced with adversity. Dialogues are pretty good, although some consist of frantic laments. The crucial aspect is how Walker delivers it with a hint of desperation.Hours is a simple movie elevated by a great actor, who delivered one of his last and best performance.