Buried with Suspense!

"Buried", a film by Rodrigo Cortés and written by Chris Sparling was released January 23 at the Sundance film festival and has yet to be released to general audiences. While I wasn't able to make it down to Utah for the fest, I was recently able to read the screenplay. First things first, here's the general plot, as long as you haven't seen the trailers.

The story opens in complete darkness with Ryan Reynolds' character Paul Conroy, your hardworking truck driving everyman, buried in a small casket deep under Iraqi ground (OHhHhhh, the that's what the title refers to). Inside of this small prison, Conroy finds only a few things: a pen, lighter, cellphone, and eventually a box provided by his captors. Without revealing to much of the plot, the rest of the film explores Conroy's struggle to escape this sand surrounded death with only a few minutes to breathe. Conveniently enough for the plot's sake, Conroy has one bar of reception for the cell phone so he can use the phone to make outgoing calls. Throughout the journey, Conroy makes calls to his work, family, friends, and even his alzheimer stricken mother, only to find hope in a leader of a search and rescue team, Dan Brenner, played by Robert Paterson (No, not Robert Pattinson, this is not a typo). He also eventually learns this cellphone was provided by his captors, a group of mysterious men that provide the political agenda of this film. While the movie never really addresses all its characters to properly, we are, in every sense of the words, given a very suspense film that plays with the audiences desire for Conroy to survive. Test after test, call after call, Conroy never seems to lose hope, and thus the audience keeps its head held high while he struggles with a lack of oxygen, fire ants, and the demands of the captors, led by the kind of stereotypical Jabir, played by José Luis García Pérez (although I suppose that is the point). At the center of this film is the conflict with mankind's resources and because of this, the film makes one question how many would be able to save you if you were in the same situation. Also there is a claustrophobic feel to Conroy's lack of an ability to move.

Despite the complaints that this film steals the idea from Quentin Tarantino's implementations in movies like Kill Bill vol. 2 and the episode of CSI episode "Grave Danger", this film comes out on its own, much more like that movie "Phone Booth" with Colin Farrell. I was especially surprised and relieved that the entire film was set in the box because this film also then becomes a test of the budget constraints versus the entertainments factor. As an independent film, it does everything it can to make itself as professional as it can, and after reading the script's fast paced style, realism definitely becomes a factor.

"Every minute counts" would have made a good tagline for this movie, especially since it would have been a double entendre for the style this film creates. Conroy is always on the move (figuratively, of course) and is doing his best throughout the movie to survive. Despite some scenes depicting Conroy's frustration and anger towards the box (completely understandable frustration and anger, I mean, he is trapped in a box and slowly suffocating), Sparling's script excites for every moment he can get out of the 80 paged script.

- Jeff Bassin