BURIED

If you are in the position of having to go to Iraq because you need the money: Watch. Your. Butt! It turns out that maybe Paul Conroy should have stayed home and got a job flipping burgers... Swallow your pride, don't risk your neck.

Buried is the highly claustrophobic, disturbing and quite horrific story of Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds); a man down on his luck who decides, against his better judgment, to take a job as a truck driver in Iraq. Several months into this rotation, the caravan he is driving in gets attacked and he wakes up, groggy and confused, in a wooden box. This is how the story starts: with him waking up and realizing he's been buried alive. For most of us, this would be the realization of childhood nightmare and would probably be the end of it, right? Realize you're doomed and then wait to die. Not for Paul...

Paul was buried with a cell phone, a knife and a lighter, all of which he uses to try and get out. He's able to find a cell signal, but who should he call in a situation like this? 911? No, but let's give it a go. His wife? No, but leave a couple of messages. The company he works for? Well, in theory they'd be the best contact... or not so much. Turns out that his company is run by a bunch of bastards who need to be buried in the desert and left to rot.

From one frustrating phone call to another, Paul is finally put in touch with an agency that is in place for this sort of situation. It's interesting, no - make that scary as hell - that there is the potential for an agency like this to actually exist in the world. Anyway, Special Agent Harris (Erik Palladino) lets Paul know that his situation is part of a blossoming industry in Iraq and is honest with Paul about potential outcome, they are working on getting him out, but he has to conserve the battery in the phone so they can continue to track his signal. Easy enough, yes? Except that the phone rings again, and there is someone unexpected on the other end. Let's just say that Paul is not getting any breaks in this story.

Although Buried has but one actor on screen the entire time, the cast felt much larger, which has everything to do with the way the story was told. The characters' interactions, the plot twists that frustrate the main character and the audience alike, and, happily, Reynolds' ability to convincingly play his part impressed me more than I anticipated.

For a movie that would normally make me scream silently in a corner, I found Buried very watchable, so I say go see this film, as long as you can take the cramped feeling of being in a pine box under a desert of sand.