Claustrophobic Buried a Manipulative Exercise
Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is a truck driver working on assignment in Iraq. He awakens after an attack on his convoy to discover he has been buried alive underground somewhere in the country. A cell phone has been left for him, the voice calling to check on his status asking for $1-million in order for his safe release. He tries to call out for help, reaching bureaucrat after bureaucrat who claim to be interested in his safety but offer only platitudes as to how they’ll get him out of his coffin.
Ryan Reynolds is in a tight spot in Buried © Lionsgate
The clock is ticking. Time is running out, and so is the air. Paul’s options are quickly vanishing, the fading battery on that cell phone his only lifeline to a freedom he’s increasingly unsure he’ll live long enough to experience.
It’s hard to figure out what to say about director Rodrigo Cortés’ claustrophobic thriller Buried. It is expertly made, superbly acted by Reynolds and oozes tension almost all the way to its finale. This is a movie that knows what it is, knows what it is doing and knows exactly how to get the job done. As calling cards go this one is absolutely crackerjack, and from its awesome opening credits on I was glued to my seat so firmly I’m almost surprised it didn’t stick to my backside when I finally exited the theatre.
But if it sounds like I enjoyed the picture, I hesitate to admit this but the exact opposite is true. At a certain point, as beautifully as the film was made and as terrific a job Cortés and his company were doing I realized his social bureaucratic commentary was going in a smugly unsatisfying direction. After some of Paul’s phone conversations, most notably one right at the start of the third act with a man representing his coldhearted employer, I knew exactly what was going to happen and why. Chris Sparling’s literate if purposely sparse script has a distinct point of view and a statement it wants to make audience enjoyment be damned, and by the time all was said and done I felt nearly as dirty as the buried-alive protagonist I’d just spent 90 emotionally frazzled minutes with.
The difficult part here is trying to go into exactly why this movie disappointed me so much without ruining many of its twists and turns as all of my main issues have everything to do with the final act. The movie wants to make you angry, and I have no problem with its point of view in regards to corporate and military indifference, but at a certain point a person invests so much in a character and their plight that they need some sort of cathartic release. Here, that never happens, and without going into what actually happens at the end or to speak as to whether or not Paul lives or dies by the time it was over it probably wouldn’t have mattered to me one way or the other. In the end the main character isn’t important, it’s his conversations that matter, and all they did was make me increasingly angry at an emotionally manipulative script and a director eager to accentuate that fact everything else be damned.
Yet this picture really is superbly made. The unbelievable sound design is beyond Oscar-worthy, every noise Paul makes or encounters in his subterranean trap sending chills so far up and down my spine I think days later I can still somewhat feel the tingling. The opening totally black sequence is immediately unnerving, the sense of visceral unease it creates so palpable I could almost hear the sweat dripping off the brows of the members of the preview audience I was seeing the film with.
Additionally, this is a somewhat remarkable tour de force for Reynolds. As much as I’m fond of him, I’ve never thought him capable of commanding the attention like he does here. He’s the only one in the picture. He is contained in a single, freakishly small space for the duration of the narrative. He never changes his clothes. He very rarely is given the opportunity to change positions. He spends much of the picture talking on the phone. Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and by the time it was over the realization as to what Reynolds accomplished, and just how singularly awesome it was, hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.
Allusions to Hitchcock abound, and by and large they’re apt, but as strong a job as Cortés does on a technical front, and no matter how morbid or oddly the Vertigo and Psycho master could push things, I never felt close to feeling as much repellant disgust from one of those pictures as I did after watching this. Buried used and abused me in ways I just can’t go into in any sort of detail unless I want to ruin its ultimate destinations. What I can say is that for all its cinematic merits this is an ugly, deeply unsatisfying thriller I can only hope I’ll never have to experience again.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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