Buried (2010)

Is it possible to make a movie in just one location and make it interesting? Hitchcock has shown it can be done with the now classic Rear Window. Another movie (which has more locations, but does end up in one location for a long time) is Phone Booth with Colin Farrell (have seen it many times). A third example is of course Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, which almost feels like a play. In all these movies the actors are not alone on the screen as there are other characters the those main characters are interacting with. This is not the case with Buried.

During 95 minutes you are looking at Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), a truck driver who was working in Iraq, who has been trapped in a coffin, buried. The only things he has are a Blackberry, a Zippo, a pencil and some glow sticks. Does this setting work as good as in the other movies that are set in one location?

Buried isn’t the first movie where the main character is buried alive. I immediately was thinking about Kill Bill vol. 2 where The Bride ended up in a coffin, although it’s just a small part of the movie. The second movie I though of was also made by Tarantino and it’s the episode he did for CSI (Las Vegas), Grave Danger. In that film one of the main characters ends up in a coffin during the whole show. Tarantino made sure that it was part of a bigger story as the rest of the team was looking for clues to find him. As a viewer you saw what was happening on both sides. He managed to show what happened inside the coffin in such a great way that you really felt for Nick Stokes (and he knew how to direct George Eads, as I never saw him act like that before). You really felt his frustration, fear and his despair, which is exactly the opposite feeling I had when I was watching Buried. I just didn’t care much for Paul Conroy.

During the movie you slowly get to know more about Paul, but because you don’t know anything about him when the movie starts there is no connection to the character yet. You don’t know what he went through in Iraq before he ended up in the coffin, you don’t know anything about his relationships. As a viewer you’ve ended up in a coffin with someone you don’t know, which didn’t work for me.
Ryan Reynolds does act well as he is able to show the fear and frustration, but watching someone for 90 minutes who’s constantly on the phone with the only changes being the color of the thing he’s using at the moment (blue, red, green and yellow) it’s a movie which I just didn’t connect with. Of course there are things that happen, but if you don’t feel that connection it does become boring.

After all the positive reviews and stories I heard about this movie I couldn’t wait to watch it. Unfortunately it just didn’t meet my expectations. If you connect with the main character you might like this movie, but I’d rather watch one of the movies I mentioned at the beginning of this review.

Score: 6