Buried

Overview

Spoiler Alert: Buried may be entirely what you expect. The simple premise of this film is of a man buried alive. But what you may not expect is that the film never shies away from this one idea. For 90 minutes you are stuck with Ryan Reynolds inside a coffin, but by the end of it you will probably marvel at how far this movie goes while boxed within these constraints.

The greatest challenge for director Rodrigo Cortes is the cynical film goer. How can a film containing just one man, in just one box, keep one enthralled for a whole 90 minutes? To test this I dragged along a cynic — a disbelieving, slightly irritable cynic. But from the opeining credits to the first interminable minutes of darkness and silence, we had both succumbed to the promise of an unusual and challenging film. Although initially I was smug, in my large comfy cinema with my large delicious cola, something happens during the course of the film — Paul Conroy's (Reynolds) oxygen starts running low and his hip flask runs dry and I cannot help but feel tight in the chest. Cortes has won his battle.

That something is a magical combination of director, actor and camera that occurs between the confines of those wooden walls. With little light, an immense amount of feeling is generated. Camera angles explore the entire terrain and I am reminded of a child playing with a brown cardboard box: Cortes' imagination within these confines is without limit. Everything feels tense and gritty. Suspense builds as the human tragedy surrounding Conroy unfurls and the clock keeps ticking. Unlike the similarly enclosed drama of Phonebooth, the action never strays form the plight of Paul Conroy. His only connection to the outside world is a phone with decreasing battery and poor reception. If acting is mostly re-acting then Reynolds has done well to shrug off his early lighter roles. Some of the phonecalls are simply harrowing, and the mandane frustrations of call centres and answering machine messages become yet another nail in his coffin.

High concept films are designed to answer a simple premise. Jurrasic Park asked "what if we could clone dinosaurs?", Jaws: "what if sharks attacked?". Buried asks "what if you were buried alive?" but the question you will ask yourself going into this film is "can I watch a man in a box for 90 minutes?". My answer is, you wont be able to look away.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=jqxvtTQpsJw