Buried

Despite the fact that there are quite a few plot holes in this quite tautly put together drama, Ryan Reynolds might actually have turned in one of the best performances of his career, here. Perhaps that's because he awakens to find he's been buried in a big wooden box with only an hip flask, torch and his phone. He's been in Iraq driving for an American truck company when it was attacked and he's now the subject of a $5millions ransom demand. Over the next ninety minutes he has to use the phone and his wits to try to track down some phone numbers who can help find his particular hole in the ground. This, bear in mind, is before we all had GPS on our telephones - so it's quite a frantic affair as he begins to realise the dangers of his predicament. There's also quite possibly one of the most obnoxious phone calls I've ever heard between him and his ass-covering personnel director that really did have me shouting "lie, for God's sake" at the screen. This gives Reynolds a chance to ditch his pretty boy image and try to imbue his character with a degree of claustrophobic frenzy from a staring start - and I think he does it quite well. It has a sinister plausibility to it, and as to the denouement - well there's nothing straightforward about that, either. Worth a watch, I'd say.

<em>'Buried'</em> mostly delivers, the ending is what makes me definitively say that I had a positive time. The film does build tension nicely, it feels claustrophobic without a doubt. It is also paced competently, impressively so given its one location setting (credit to Ryan Reynolds). The only criticism I hold is that the film makes the lead character kinda unlikeable early on, which really shouldn't be the case given it ought to be a tap-in to make you care for Paul Conroy given the plot's nature. To me, in moments, he came across more dick-y than panicked. That kinda led me down the garden path in terms of predicting how it was going to all end, one on my (half-baked) theories was that it was going to head in a <em>'Butterfly on a Wheel'</em>-esque (great movie, fwiw) direction. It didn't, of course, but the unpredictability was satisfying. I'm perhaps being harsh or was overanalysing with the unlikability factor. Either way, it doesn't really matter all that much because I still think of this in a good way post-watch. Well worth seeing.