Slow but edgy thriller

Hours
Staring: Paul Walker, Génesis Rodríguez, TJ Hassan, Nick Gomez, Judd Lormand
Rated: 5/10
First things first: Deepest condolences for Paul Walker who was a fine actor and a good human being. This one is his last and very ironically, he survives all odds on screen. Set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which unleashed a never before trail of destruction and power outage for five days on the trot, you can call Hours a slow thriller. Despite its languid pace, it is creditable that you are on seat’s edge for most part of the film.
Walker a debutant father whose pregnant wife dies during childbirth, is a picture of gloom and doom. He does well to hold his tears and propel the grey mood of bereavement in a silently powerful manner. His newborn, whom he names Abigail after his beloved dead wife, breathes on a ventilator, the power of which is fast fading out.
The deserted hospital, Walker’s stubborn fight for the survival of his daughter till help comes his way, the outside mayhem relayed through TV and the darkness of 48 hours without power gets to you in all kinds of ways. It is a very slow film, mostly restricted to a dark hospital corridor and a room where the baby breathes precariously in a box. She has not cried since birth and that’s the sound of life Walker is looking for. Doctors and nurses are all gone, the floors are flooded and there is no food or water for these excruciating three days. Besides pumping life into the battery manually every two minutes, there is nothing Walker can do — except wait for a chopper to come and rescue him and his daughter.
The entire fight is dogged and there are no distractions from that, except for the flashbacks that Walker takes to relive his moments with his wife. All this makes this one an edgy film but people with some amount of patience would be able to appreciate this one. Wish Walker was alive to see how well he survived on screen. 
Source: The Pioneer, 29 December, 2013

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