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Sunday, September 26, 2010

MOVIE REVIEW 
Buried
Help!  A Shrill, Desperate Cry Against Bureaucracy


Ryan Reynolds as Paul Conroy, trapped with the element of time sans space in "Buried". 
LionsGate

by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW
Sunday, September 26, 2010

Zut alors!  Crikey!  Red tape horror! 

"Buried", which plays like a standstill version of "Speed", will be viewed by many as either a nasty, grievous tease, an absurdity or a waste of time.  Yet Ryan Reynolds' solo act has enough caché to keep audiences interested and entertained.  The Lionsgate release opened on Friday in additional select cities across the U.S., joining the New York and Los Angeles markets.

Mr. Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver for a U.S. independent contractor company in Iraq (think: Blackwater/XE).  He wakes up somewhere in the aforementioned Middle Eastern country in a box just big enough to call his home.  (No, not an box apartment on the Upper East Side of New York.)  The entire film consists of Mr. Reynolds, darkness and four immediate, distinct and vital characters: a cell phone, a lighter, a pen and time, the most important ingredient of all.

Rodrigo Cortés directs "Buried", whose movie poster markets a slight variation on the "Alien" poster, with an "in zero space no one can hear you scream" situation.  At its heart however, "Buried" is a horror story about bureaucracy run amok.  Save for one or two brief shots, the film, nicely lensed by young cinematographer Eduard Grau ("A Single Man"), is neither grisly nor graphic, but is occasionally harrowing.  Its slow but steady pacing is punctuated by silences, close-ups and sounds.  Standard obstacles and monkey wrenches are tossed Paul's way, some more psychological and demanding than others.

"Buried" though, is an otherwise unremarkable entry in the race-against-time drama genre.  Of course there have been far better films (the original "D.O.A.", "The Big Clock"), but what sets Mr. Cortés' film apart from more recent others are a few of its plausible bureaucratic nightmares and entanglements.  We relate to Paul's situation not because he's trapped but because of the claustrophobia and inertia of his dealings with those who repeatedly try to help him.  Even if we can barely breathe watching Paul stuck in a coffin that the world's worse criminals wouldn't be caught dead in, we choke (or chortle) when we hear a few of the useless, irrelevant and infuriating things that are said to him on his phone.  Are these voices in Paul's head?  Could they be?

To his credit, Mr. Reynolds admirably ups the ante in a film that could easily have gone south after only a few minutes.  He reacts to the dark and the impossible space in which his character finds himself constrained.  It's actually a very physical performance from an actor normally thought of as a comedic player, though he's worked the dramatic angle before ("The Amityville Horror", for one.)  Mr. Reynolds' character in "Buried" represents a sounding board of matter-of-fact every-person responses, mainly reactions that audiences can reasonably imagine under the circumstances.

The voice characters in "Buried" are numerous on the other end of Paul's cell phone, three of which are spoken by acting coach Warner Loughlin.  They are as frustrating, idiotic and annoying as the predicament Paul finds himself in. 

With the voices of: José Luis Garcìa-Pèrez, Robert Paterson, Stephen Tobolowsky, Samantha Mathis, Ivana Miño, Erik Palladino, Cade Dundish, Juan Hidalgo, Abdelilah Ben Massou.

"Buried" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for language and some violent content.  The film's running time is one hour and 34 minutes.

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