Buried is an independent suspense thriller directed by Rodrigo Cortes and starring Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a US citizen who is in Iraq working as a truck driver delivering goods and materials. The film opens with Conroy waking up in a wooden coffin buried six feet under ground. All he has on him is a Zippo lighter and a Blackberry. We come to learn Paul is being held hostage by insurgents who attacked him and his fellow drivers earlier. He has an hour and a half to come up with ransom money or he will be left to die. From here Cortes takes the viewer on a suspenseful journey for 90 minutes as we watch Paul do everything within his power to try and break free from his prison in the ground.
Creating a movie where there is one actor in one set location for an entire film is a very daunting task to ask of a director. Cortes however does about as good a job as any could ask. First, the movie is kept to a 95 minute running time which is about as long as one could make a movie like this and still keep the viewers full attention. Second, Cortes uses multiple camera angles and shots to help play on the events, struggles, and emotions portrayed by Reynolds. This is quite helpful in keeping the viewer's eye from getting tired of a repetitive view, and from getting frustrated with the lack of different scene locations.
Though creating such a film with this uniqueness is difficult, so is trying to act and portray a good enough performance in order to keep an audience's attention throughout. Again, Ryan Reynolds doe as a good a job as most actors could do. Yes, he's working off a well written script, but he must portray countless different emotions, while going through many ups and downs with them. From being completely hysterical, to desperate, angry, hopeless. It is a lot to ask of someone and Reynolds' success with many of these helps create and sustain, along with the directing, the suspense that is delivered throughout the entirety of the film.
How this movie can really get to a person is its ability to play with every persons' emotions while you watch. You start to imagine what if this happened to me? How would I react? Probably the same way mostly. If you're a claustrophobic person already just watching this could bother you. But in the end it just comes down to feeling very real. Every action Conroy takes throughout, whether to help himself get out, or perhaps accept a deadly fate closing in, just helps create the human to human connection that allows the viewer to feel for this fictional person you are watching.
Overall, I give this movie a thumbs up and 3 out of 4 stars. I would not necessarily recommend watching this late at night, as it did make me a bit nervous I would have a nightmare about the exact situation. But who knows maybe that's just me. You can get this movie on Blu-Ray or DVD, or through Netflix as either DVD or streaming instantly. Enjoy!
