Saturday, December 18, 2010

Movie Review: "Buried"


Paul Conroy awakes in a coffin buried under ground with only a cellphone and a Zippo lighter to aid him in his escape in the movie Buried. It's a movie all about the premise, all about the situation, all about the coffin, cause it takes place entirely in that one location. The movie is a checklist of all the things that could take this nightmarish situation and make it worse. A snake gets in the coffin, in one of the more thrilling sequences of the movie. Check! A fire starts in the coffin. Check! Dirt starts flooding in through a hole in the coffin. Check! The movie is a thrill ride that delivers in all of the desired areas. Ryan Reynolds is incredible, showing the range of just about every kind of emotion you'd feel in this situation. Fear. Anxiety. Sorrow. Frustration. Reynolds makes this a one-man show worth watching by just channeling the primal emotions of man, but the emotions can't fully cover up the moments where he is simply lying there in the coffin with nothing to do, and some stronger character development could have helped in that territory; of course, that is for writer Chris Sparling to figure out, and not Reynolds. So it's a fun and intense thrill ride, often at times channeling the work of Hitchcock, largely in part due to the marvelous title sequence and the fantastic musical score by Victor Reyes. But really, it's a face value entertainment only, not much going on beneath the surface save for the commentary on America's policy of dealing with terrorists. So what? This is a movie that is intense and nerve wracking, like it should be.

I give Buried a B+!

No comments:

Post a Comment