Remember the bit in the James Bond movie 'Diamonds are Forever' where Sean Connery wakes up to find himself locked in a coffin about to be incinerated? Or the bit in 'The Vanishing' where a character wakes up to find he's been buried alive? That's exactly what 'Buried' is; except it's what should be a small moment in another movie stretched to feature running time. That might not seem like a good idea at the first... After all, how many times have we heard of short films being extended to feature length that should probably have remained short films? What hope can there be for a single scene being stretched out to ninety-five minutes? Can it work? You'd naturally assume it shouldn't
But strangely
it does. For a movie set entirely in a wooden box, Buried works rather well.
The film could be a lesson taken from the 'Alfred Hitchcock School of Suspense Filmmaking' where a single location is utilized with a limited cast. Further proof of this can even be seen in the opening titles and music which are so Hitchcockian in tone, you could almost imagine them being plucked from 1960s Cary Grant film. A man called Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up to discover he's been sealed inside a wooden box/coffin and buried alive in what we soon discover to be Iraq. He quickly locates a mobile phone that has been placed in the coffin with him and sets about trying to notify the authorities of his terrifying predicament while simultaneously negotiating with the shadowy personnel who put him there in the first place. With his oxygen running low, it's desperate a race against time
Years ago if someone had said it was possible to make an entire movie set in a box with only one character, most people would probably have laughed at them. And rightly so: how exactly do you make a movie set in a box with only one actor? It's impossible, right? Wrong. Director Rodrigo Cortés and writer Chris Sparling have done it: they have achieved what you'd outwardly assume to be impossible. In fact, that is movie is so entertaining at all is a huge achievement seen as it represents everything that so-called 'gurus' like Robert Mckee would probably rally against. It throws the rulebook out the window and tries to do something different.
Movies like this have been attempted before of course – Phone Booth, for example - but they usually cut to different locations at some point and have other cast members coming and going throughout the scenes. Not so here. This is a lesson in claustrophobia where one man is about as much cast you're going to get. It really shouldn't work, but it does tenfold. Ryan Reynolds is really good in this, giving lots of dramatic weight to his role. He really deserves plaudits for attaching himself to such a project, which even if you ignore the financial limitations, must have surely been a strange experience that would have inevitably left a bad taste for a long time. There are moments when he's still on 'Planet Ryan' of course, but for the most part he turns in an intense and completely convincing character. He's easily identifiable as this 'blue-collar Joe' caught up in a situation where no one apparently gives a crap about his predicament. Unfortunately that's where the movie goes into strange political territory, but more on that later.
This is real 'kitchen sink filmmaking' of the highest order because writer Chris Sparling - clearly aware of the potential limitations of his story - throws everything but the aforementioned domestic appliance into the mix for the sake of an entertaining show. He keeps it moving at a fast pace, even finding time for a bit of Indiana Jones-type slithery tomfoolery!
Plaudits must also go to Rodrigo Cortés. He's a great director and he proves his metal here. A lot of directors would be out of their depth making a movie like this (go stand in the corner, Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay) and would probably be feeling very limited and restricted by its scope. Cortés, however, seems to thrive on it, pulling out every trick in his little book on directing to create something that has a lot of variety and depth when you would actually be expecting the exact opposite. It will be very interesting to see what projects he attaches himself to. On the strength of this, he could turn out to be one of the best directors out there.
Now there is a political slant. And the movie works fine with it, but one can't help but wonder if it would have been so much better without it. The film would probably have been more effective as a straight-up, full-on suspense horror movie - aka Saw - where the buried protagonist is being menaced by an unseen presence for reasons not readily apparent. But the moment the filmmakers throw Iraq into the mix and all the uncomfortable connotations that goes along with it, it takes the movie out of its comfort zone and places it into a political allegory for the failures of the war, i.e., the people on the ground are the last priority for those managing any conflict. While admirable, we don't need such overtures in what should be a simple popcorn suspense movie.
But that's a just small aside in a movie that does pretty much everything else brilliantly. The limitations of its setting actually turn out to be its greatest strengths: it should be boring, but it isn't; it shouldn't even be riveting, but it is. This is a great movie and Hollywood producers could learn a thing or two from it. It's very claustrophobic and if you suffer from nerves, probably not for you. But for the rest of us, though, it's a dark, bold and imaginative piece of exciting movie-making – a superior example of filmmakers 'thinking outside the box'. Pun intended.
The film could be a lesson taken from the 'Alfred Hitchcock School of Suspense Filmmaking' where a single location is utilized with a limited cast. Further proof of this can even be seen in the opening titles and music which are so Hitchcockian in tone, you could almost imagine them being plucked from 1960s Cary Grant film. A man called Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up to discover he's been sealed inside a wooden box/coffin and buried alive in what we soon discover to be Iraq. He quickly locates a mobile phone that has been placed in the coffin with him and sets about trying to notify the authorities of his terrifying predicament while simultaneously negotiating with the shadowy personnel who put him there in the first place. With his oxygen running low, it's desperate a race against time
Years ago if someone had said it was possible to make an entire movie set in a box with only one character, most people would probably have laughed at them. And rightly so: how exactly do you make a movie set in a box with only one actor? It's impossible, right? Wrong. Director Rodrigo Cortés and writer Chris Sparling have done it: they have achieved what you'd outwardly assume to be impossible. In fact, that is movie is so entertaining at all is a huge achievement seen as it represents everything that so-called 'gurus' like Robert Mckee would probably rally against. It throws the rulebook out the window and tries to do something different.
Movies like this have been attempted before of course – Phone Booth, for example - but they usually cut to different locations at some point and have other cast members coming and going throughout the scenes. Not so here. This is a lesson in claustrophobia where one man is about as much cast you're going to get. It really shouldn't work, but it does tenfold. Ryan Reynolds is really good in this, giving lots of dramatic weight to his role. He really deserves plaudits for attaching himself to such a project, which even if you ignore the financial limitations, must have surely been a strange experience that would have inevitably left a bad taste for a long time. There are moments when he's still on 'Planet Ryan' of course, but for the most part he turns in an intense and completely convincing character. He's easily identifiable as this 'blue-collar Joe' caught up in a situation where no one apparently gives a crap about his predicament. Unfortunately that's where the movie goes into strange political territory, but more on that later.
This is real 'kitchen sink filmmaking' of the highest order because writer Chris Sparling - clearly aware of the potential limitations of his story - throws everything but the aforementioned domestic appliance into the mix for the sake of an entertaining show. He keeps it moving at a fast pace, even finding time for a bit of Indiana Jones-type slithery tomfoolery!
Plaudits must also go to Rodrigo Cortés. He's a great director and he proves his metal here. A lot of directors would be out of their depth making a movie like this (go stand in the corner, Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay) and would probably be feeling very limited and restricted by its scope. Cortés, however, seems to thrive on it, pulling out every trick in his little book on directing to create something that has a lot of variety and depth when you would actually be expecting the exact opposite. It will be very interesting to see what projects he attaches himself to. On the strength of this, he could turn out to be one of the best directors out there.
Now there is a political slant. And the movie works fine with it, but one can't help but wonder if it would have been so much better without it. The film would probably have been more effective as a straight-up, full-on suspense horror movie - aka Saw - where the buried protagonist is being menaced by an unseen presence for reasons not readily apparent. But the moment the filmmakers throw Iraq into the mix and all the uncomfortable connotations that goes along with it, it takes the movie out of its comfort zone and places it into a political allegory for the failures of the war, i.e., the people on the ground are the last priority for those managing any conflict. While admirable, we don't need such overtures in what should be a simple popcorn suspense movie.
But that's a just small aside in a movie that does pretty much everything else brilliantly. The limitations of its setting actually turn out to be its greatest strengths: it should be boring, but it isn't; it shouldn't even be riveting, but it is. This is a great movie and Hollywood producers could learn a thing or two from it. It's very claustrophobic and if you suffer from nerves, probably not for you. But for the rest of us, though, it's a dark, bold and imaginative piece of exciting movie-making – a superior example of filmmakers 'thinking outside the box'. Pun intended.