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JT (287 KP) rated Buried (2010) in Movies
Mar 10, 2020
Shot with a low budget and entirely in one location (inside Paul’s coffin), Buried is a very intense and gripping movie, which plays on the age-old human fear of being buried alive and takes it to whole new levels.
Paul not only has to deal with thoughts of his almost imminent demise, but he also has to endure the psychological torment that comes with realising that your loved ones are in terrible danger and that the people whom your life depends upon don’t really care about your fate. This is the story of Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), an American contractor working on an assignment in Iraq, who wakes up in something which looks like a makeshift wooden coffin, alone, and with no recollection of when and how he ended up there. All he remembers is that he and his colleagues were attacked by a group of Iraqi insurgents.
Understandably, he begins to panic, frantically trying to escape before realising that he won’t be able to do it on his own. Whoever buried him left a mobile phone, a lighter, a knife, a torch and some glow sticks in the coffin, and such items quickly become Paul’s connection to the outside world and his only hope of survival.
This situation is so exceptional (thankfully) that the film’s real challenge is to try and represent it as realistically as possible. What would you do? Would you let the nerves get the better of you, or would your will to live step in instead, and make you stay focused in trying to save yourself?
Ryan Reynolds does an excellent job in this, his Paul Conroy is human, desperate, scared, with no superhero pretence. The direction, by Rodrigo Cortes, is vivid, realistic, and makes good use of the limited space that the coffin setting allows to show; anxious people should try watching this anyway because, while it is undoubtedly claustrophobic, Paul’s determination to stay alive and the pull of wanting to know what’s going on outside keeps the mind occupied.
The voice of Hostage Work Group operator Dan Brenner (Robert Paterson) is possibly a little too “staged” and “actorish”, making it sound somewhat fake but also sinister, going to heighten the feeling of dread. Buried manages to be scary, tense, and yet ironic in representing the ignorance, incompetence and cowardice behind the behaviours of people we are supposed to trust in dangerous situations.
The whole film maintains a focused and realistic eye on the suffering of the protagonist – because we are supposed to feel what he feels, to be there with him in his fight for life- except maybe in a few moments when it slips into “mainstream”, cheap stratagems to reiterate that Paul is a good man who doesn’t deserve his fate (for example, when he calls his ill, senile mother who lives in a home and can’t even remember him).
Definitely best watched in a cinema screen rather than on DVD, this is a film which is very well done, and interesting; you will want to see what happens of Paul but also how his story is told from the confines of his coffin buried underground.
Paul not only has to deal with thoughts of his almost imminent demise, but he also has to endure the psychological torment that comes with realising that your loved ones are in terrible danger and that the people whom your life depends upon don’t really care about your fate. This is the story of Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), an American contractor working on an assignment in Iraq, who wakes up in something which looks like a makeshift wooden coffin, alone, and with no recollection of when and how he ended up there. All he remembers is that he and his colleagues were attacked by a group of Iraqi insurgents.
Understandably, he begins to panic, frantically trying to escape before realising that he won’t be able to do it on his own. Whoever buried him left a mobile phone, a lighter, a knife, a torch and some glow sticks in the coffin, and such items quickly become Paul’s connection to the outside world and his only hope of survival.
This situation is so exceptional (thankfully) that the film’s real challenge is to try and represent it as realistically as possible. What would you do? Would you let the nerves get the better of you, or would your will to live step in instead, and make you stay focused in trying to save yourself?
Ryan Reynolds does an excellent job in this, his Paul Conroy is human, desperate, scared, with no superhero pretence. The direction, by Rodrigo Cortes, is vivid, realistic, and makes good use of the limited space that the coffin setting allows to show; anxious people should try watching this anyway because, while it is undoubtedly claustrophobic, Paul’s determination to stay alive and the pull of wanting to know what’s going on outside keeps the mind occupied.
The voice of Hostage Work Group operator Dan Brenner (Robert Paterson) is possibly a little too “staged” and “actorish”, making it sound somewhat fake but also sinister, going to heighten the feeling of dread. Buried manages to be scary, tense, and yet ironic in representing the ignorance, incompetence and cowardice behind the behaviours of people we are supposed to trust in dangerous situations.
The whole film maintains a focused and realistic eye on the suffering of the protagonist – because we are supposed to feel what he feels, to be there with him in his fight for life- except maybe in a few moments when it slips into “mainstream”, cheap stratagems to reiterate that Paul is a good man who doesn’t deserve his fate (for example, when he calls his ill, senile mother who lives in a home and can’t even remember him).
Definitely best watched in a cinema screen rather than on DVD, this is a film which is very well done, and interesting; you will want to see what happens of Paul but also how his story is told from the confines of his coffin buried underground.