Buried

Well, before we proceed with the usual fun bag of piercing insight and cinematic acuity that my dear readers have come to expect on these web pages, I probably should come clean about something. My interest in this film was first piqued when I'd heard that the ever so hunky, burgeoning superstar Ryan Reynolds had taken a challenging role in a small, meagerly budgeted side project where he would be "buried deep inside a box".

Come to find out, it's not a porn flick.

Sometimes my prurience gets the better of me.

Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed Buried.

It has quite a few things going for it. Firstly, it is a creep fest of a thriller. A squirm-inducing, uneasy little curio, long on distress, short on running time and efficient in its motives. Think Open Water without the sun, sea and petty bickering of a dissolving couple. Or Phone Booth, without the annoyance of being stranded with Colin Farrell for ninety minutes.

Buried also has a cast of one, excluding voice roles, which makes it a unique film experience in this day and age. This welcomed exiguousness of players also greatly increases the chance it will be an enjoyable gambol simply by ruling out the possibility of Julianne Moore being in it.

The film is what Woody Allen would coin "the claustrophobic's jackpot". We open to a black screen with audibly heavy breathing and an impending sense of panic. A butane lighter is flicked and we see Reynolds' predicament. He is buried alive in a coffin - gagged, bound, sweaty and bloody. His initial freak out sets the tone for what is sustained consternation for the ensuing 90 minutes. Brutal, I tells ya, brutal.

Armed with nothing but his wits, a lighter, a cell phone, a pencil and a small flask of hooch, he must overcome his confusion, confinement and a busload of anxiety to extricate himself.

No MacGuyver he - Richard Dean Anderson would have fashioned Pegasus out of those scant tools, burst forth from the casket in winged equine glory and exacted revenge on his captors - Reynolds is left to the uninspired design of phoning everyone from the F.B.I. to his trucking company and, in obvious resignation to his own doom, his wife.

But director Rodrigo Cortés keeps a lively pace and we do begin to feel for this poor bastard, despite him being a contractor in Iraq (I argue you reap what you sow when in service to THE EMPIRE). Truly, most any half-capable actor could have pulled this off adequately (the emotions are obvious and limited), but it is to Reynolds' credit that he would absorb himself in such a small, unglamorous, non-commercial role at a time when his star is soaring. Tom Cruise would never have done this in the '80s and current wunderkind Shia LaBeouf acts like he's trapped in a wooden box no matter what he's doing.

Take a look at this one. It's minimalist cinema, performance driven and rarely succumbs to cliché. Its budget was about the cost of my lunch yesterday (Buddha's Delight at House of Fong) unless Reynolds was a greedy fuck. And he would be within his rights. This film would never have seen the light of day without him.

Even if he is too chicken shit to do hardcore.