Buried (2010)

Interesting and entertaining movie getting the maximum from just an actor and a coffin. However, you will feel cheated every now and then when you see how the coffin seems to enlarge and shrink.

Despite the fact that there are quite a few plot holes in this quite tautly put together drama, Ryan Reynolds might actually have turned in one of the best performances of his career, here. Perhaps that's because he awakens to find he's been buried in a big wooden box with only an hip flask, torch and his phone. He's been in Iraq driving for an American truck company when it was attacked and he's now the subject of a $5millions ransom demand. Over the next ninety minutes he has to use the phone and his wits to try to track down some phone numbers who can help find his particular hole in the ground. This, bear in mind, is before we all had GPS on our telephones - so it's quite a frantic affair as he begins to realise the dangers of his predicament. There's also quite possibly one of the most obnoxious phone calls I've ever heard between him and his ass-covering personnel director that really did have me shouting "lie, for God's sake" at the screen. This gives Reynolds a chance to ditch his pretty boy image and try to imbue his character with a degree of claustrophobic frenzy from a staring start - and I think he does it quite well. It has a sinister plausibility to it, and as to the denouement - well there's nothing straightforward about that, either. Worth a watch, I'd say.