Playlist: Buried

When we talk about ambitious films, our thoughts typically drift toward the epic. Peter Jackson's scaling the heights of the insurmountable Lord of the Rings is the most often cited example. But a lot of what we're talking about in those instances is logistics. Just figuring out where to start something on that level is a victory in itself.

But there's also a more compact form of ambition that simply deals with the craft of storytelling (the whole point of movies) and it's that which intrigued me about this film from the moment I heard about it. How was director Rodrigo Cortes possibly going to pull off this ambitious premise: one set and one actor for 90 minutes? Or, more to the point, how was he going to do it successfully?

The key, it turns out, was not to rely on gimmicks (ok, one snake) or cheats. It really is just Ryan Reynolds, as a kidnapped truck driver in Iraq, in a coffin the whole time, barely able to maneuver in the tight space and with only a cell phone to communicate with the outside world. I thought Reynolds did a very credible job in a role not in his usual wheelhouse (actually just surviving the claustrophobia of filming should win him an award). Really, who's to say how someone would react in that situation. Yes, he makes decisions I hope I wouldn't, but maybe I would make worse. I kept thinking of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and tried to remember it's probably not that easy to dig yourself out of your own grave (even with a knife).

As you've read, my esteemed colleague caught the bored bug a few times, but I was hooked by waiting to see how Cortes would dig himself out of the hole he had dug for himself. To my pleasant surprise, he showed a lot of creative discipline and stuck to the premise to the end. That alone is a plus for me.