Buried

Buried has a simple concept; a man, Paul Conroy, is trapped in a box underground and being held to ransom for $ 5 million. Not much else to it, right? Well it is a credit to both leading and only on screen actor Ryan Reynolds and director Rodrigo Cortes that they manage to make something so simple one of the tensest films I have seen in months.

The film starts off with an incredibly ‘Hitchcockian’ feel: the use of music, the every day man trapped in a situation that he didn’t cause; surrounded, in this case using a phone, by people and none of them can help you. Cortes borrows a lot from the master of tension and it makes the first half of the film un-missable. Add to it the close camera angles, face shots and occasional submersion into darkness and each member of the audience is taken into that claustrophobic box. Then, just as quickly, the cameras will pan out and surrounding the coffin is blackness and a sense of complete hopelessness. Cortes plays with the audiences’ emotions very effectively.

Being the only one on screen Reynolds has a tough job of carrying the whole 95 minutes, but he does it superbly and is excellent to watch, for the most part. Conroy goes through a whole spectrum of emotion from anger, to despair, to acceptance, to hope and everything in between with Reynolds demonstrating them all superbly. However, he is not alone for the entire film as there are plenty of voices on the other end of the telephone. Some of the voice acting was excellent, such as Robert Paterson as Agent Dan Brenner, while others felt a little cliché such as Jose Luis Garcia Perez as the Iraqi kidnapper.  Reynolds admitted himself that this was likely the toughest shoot he has ever done. He left the set after 17 days of being buried with splinters all over his body, singed fingers and heavy asthma; it all seems a very long way from Van Wilder.

The film, however, was not perfect and suffered from not believing enough in itself. After about half way through someone, I don’t know who, seems to have felt the audience might have got a bit bored and decided to crank up the tension factor, using some very obvious cinematic ploys. Some of these ploys worked and kept me on edge, but some didn’t, like a snake appearing, and these ones looked silly and ended up breaking up the tension. Sadly the film never really recovers and it is a real shame that no one felt the situation would be tense enough without having to make it seem even more so.

All in all it is a very good film that has a great concept, which unfortunately couldn’t be maintained throughout the entire film. I think if the film had been made 20 minutes shorter then all the ‘cheap’ thrills could have cut out, leaving the audience with as much tension and the film would have been better for it.

2:1 A unique film full of ambition and promise which it delivers…mostly.

Buried

I am very excited to see how this one turns out. ‘Buried’ is about one man (Ryan Reynolds) being trapped in a coffin for 95 minutes. Director Rodrigo Cortes says you won’t be bored for a second, I wonder if he is right.