Dvd
Buried
An intriguing Spanish indie-thriller starring Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal) as a civilian contractor in Iraq. He awakes to find himself buried alive in a coffin, with only a lighter, a knife and a cell phone. Initially he can't remember how we got there, but his memory slowly begins to return...
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Robert Paterson, José Luis García Pérez, Stephen Tobolowsky, Samantha Mathis, Warner Loughlin, Ivana Miño, Erik Palladino, Anne Lockhart
Directed by Rodrigo Cortés ('The Contestant')
Written by Chris Sparling
Thriller, Mystery | 1hr 35mins | Origin: Spain | Official Site »
The Talk
9 votes / 1 comments
Flicks review
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4
Fancy spending 95 minutes stuck in a box with Ryan Reynolds? Us neither. But prepare yourself, because Buried might well be the best thriller of the year. It’s certainly the easiest to synopsise.
A contractor kidnapped in Iraq, Paul Conroy (Reynolds) wakes alone, unmissed, somewhere underground (but not so far that he can’t get a mobile phone signal). We hear him before we see him, panting, panicking, literally wasting his breath in terror, and then we barely see anything else for the rest of the film. Illuminated only by his lighter, Conroy calls the authorities back home, wading through various levels of bureaucratic fuckwittery to discover some people put death (his) before dishonour (theirs). It’s an excruciating situation, masterfully played by Reynolds, whose anguished despatches to loved ones past and present fill in the petty little details that make up a life.
Film is an irrepressibly social medium; Reynolds an irrepressibly (some might say irritatingly) verbal actor, so there’s something both genius and obscene about subjecting him to solitary confinement by cinema. Though lesser talents would have been unable to resist cutaway scenes and flashbacks – anything to open up the story – Cortés and Sparling know that if we leave this impromptu tomb for even a second it sacrifices the sadistic cachet they’ve built up across 95 nerve-shredding minutes. We never do. The result is a watertight, watch-once fight-or-flight flick that refuses to let its main character – or the audience – off the hook, however much they wish it would.SHARE:
The people's reviews
9 reviews
Press Reviews
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Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert)
The use of 2:35 wide screen paradoxically increases the effect of claustrophobia. I would not like to be buried alive.
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Christchurch Press (James Croot)
The entire story is told from within the claustrophobic confines of a coffin buried six feet under.
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Empire (UK)
A brutally intense indie that commits to its bleak premise and doesn't back down. Tarantino will cackle as he watches.
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New York Post
On a technical level Buried is impressive, at times blisteringly suspenseful.
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New York Times
In the movie's cheapest, most exploitative gesture - just as it is about to run out of tricks - a snake slithers into the pine box in which Paul awakens bound and gagged, not knowing where he is. With that gimmick, the movie sacrifices its last shred of integrity.
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Variety (USA)
In purely cinematic terms, Buried, set in late 2006, is an ingenious exercise in sustained tension that would make Alfred Hitchcock turn over in his grave.
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dhtbrowne
I thought it was a really awesome movie :D
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