Buried (2010) - 80%
Claustrophic thriller starring Ryan Renolds as Paul Conroy, a truck driver kidnapped in Iraq and buried alive with only a mobile phone, a lighter and a pencil with which to survive. Utterly gripping and moving in equal measures, a lot has been made of director Rodrigo Cortés’ achievement of filling 90 minutes with just one man in a box. And boy does he achieve it; even without the use of flashbacks or a single exterior shot. Credit also goes to Ryan Renolds, who had threatened to be this decade’s Ben Affleck, but here puts in a storming performance to elicit genuine emotional response.
The description of ‘claustrophic thriller’ has never been made so apposite than in Buried. Other such recent takes on this rather niche genre, including the excellent Phonebooth (2002) and 127 hours (2010), have given themselves the priviledge of flashbacks and shots from outside of the focal area, but Buried is not one such. Masterful direction and writing (and acting) somehow manage to capture the attention for the full runtime, and even with only minimal insight into the life of Conroy (Renolds) he is a character about who’s plight we are very much able to care.
Entailing as it does an American hostage in Iraq, it could also very easily slip into the jingoistic and the rather laughable pro-Americawoohyeah! but it avoids this intelligently and with bite. Instead it is a personal struggle of one man - not a soldier, not even a war correspondent - and his fight for survival. The strain in his voice and his sense of despair are palpable, his moments of small triumph infectious and his defeats equally crushing. At times it is a wonderful examination of life and death.
80%
