Buried

Forget thinking outside the box
You wouldn't figure a movie that spends the entire 90 minutes stuck inside a coffin with just a single actor could be anything but boring, but thanks to a real revelation of a performance from Ryan Reynolds, Buried defies the odds. The premise is simple. A civilian truck driver in Iraq wakes up and finds himself buried alive. Because it's shot in real time, every suffocating minute he fights through, we also share in the agony. I must warn you that patience is required. The movie moves along at a decent pace and there is plenty of suspense, but we as the audience experience nothing other than what this unfortunate character is going through. This includes a couple of minutes along the way of staring at a black screen as his various lights go out. Don't worry too much though, because he has a zippo, flashlight, two glow sticks and the faint light from a cell phone to help us see what is going on. The phone also come in handy for dialogue purposes. Why does he have all of these things...

Up Close and Personal...
I bought this movie. I'm always looking for different ways of telling a story. This was excellent storytelling. Now I'm extremely claustrophobic. It's difficult getting me inside of an elevator. So everytime there was a shot of this enclosed space, I found myself hyper-ventilating. It's not shot in the 'first person' but still you have no one but the Paul Conroy character to identify with. You begin to see, feel, hear and experience his situation along with him. His sense of helplessness, growing fear and panic is yours as well. I am not a 'spoiler' so this review will be brief. Suffice it to say it was not a waste of money. Kept me enthralled and left me weary and weepy (is that a word?) to the end. Gave me a lot to think about and not easy to shake off. I highly recommend this movie to those who are looking for more entertaining, cerebral cinema viewing. Just my 3cents.

Gripping Thriller
A man wakes up to find himself in the dark, trapped in a small space like a coffin. All he can find is a lighter and a cell phone. And the cell phone's battery is running very low and is likely to be out of power at any moment. Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is the man, an American truck river who is literally buried alive. In this riveting thriller Paul tries to figure out how to contact the right person to get a help before it is too late.

The thrilling film is an admirable feat on the part of the scriptwriter Chris Sparling and the director Rodrigo Cortés. They refuse to rely on familiar narrative devices such as flashbacks, making the viewers share the same claustrophobic experiences of being trapped in a wooden box. It is like reading an Edgar Allan Poe short story, a well-told tale of terror that grabs your attention instantly and never lets go.

But the real star of the suspenseful film is of course Ryan Reynolds as the buried man. Unique as it is, the...

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