Buried

Claustrophobic viewers may want to skip this one-man show about an American truck driver ambushed by insurgents and buried alive in the Iraqi desert. Director Rodrigo Cortés never moves the camera away from the wooden box in which Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is imprisoned, as we watch him desperately trying to escape while becoming increasingly frantic as fissures in the coffin let sand—and a snake—seep in. Paul is provided with cell phones, enabling him to communicate not only with his kidnapper (who's demanding a hefty ransom), but also with his wife and friends, government officials, and his employers. This scenario leads to a great deal of frustration with answering machines, acquaintances who hang up on him, bureaucrats focused on ensuring that the press doesn't get wind of the embarrassing story, and corporate hacks looking for ways to avoid liability. Buried does manage some visceral tension in the form of batteries that are inevitably running down and “failure of service” messages on phone screens, and Reynolds works hard to earn our sympathy, but ultimately the film doesn't go very far beyond its basic setup—winding up more as an exercise in barebones cinema than penetrating drama. Still, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)