BSA 204 W10 : Buried

Since I'm interested in contained thrillers I finally watched the Ryan Reynolds vehicle Buried (2010). Directed by Rodrigo Cortes and penned by Chris Sparling.

The movie is about a truck driver in Iraq who wakes up buried alive by terrorists who demand him to get the American government to give them 5 million dollars in return for his life.

The movie is well made considering its confined setting, how quickly it goes by and how it's never boring. 

There is also some missed potential in my mind though, don't know if its the writing or just the technical elements - the biggest problem I had because of how the cinematography tried things but never did anything to metaphorically show the characters' journey or state of mind. It did it to some extent but not nearly enough, it uses handheld to show he's panicked but  the lighting (which they have many sources of, even different colours) is never properly applied. 

One of these scenes is very intense as he's losing signal, the other is intriguing 

where he's finding out new information. They look the same in terms of lighting. 

There are a lot of different light sources they just aren't really used to help 

subconciously communicate the characters' state of mind. 

The best scene was the one with the snake, it's a scene that makes most of the situation, extending it beyond just the negotiation stuff and providing a physical threat that makes sense considering the context. It's very tense and something anyone can relate to, his solution (which requires him to show some quick thinking and ingenuity) also proves to result in further complications, something which is always great.

I think it's very important to have characters' actions have consequences, especially if those consequences provide more problems. I don't think this had enough of that - aside from the bit with the snake I can't really think of others. For example him continuously using the lighter and not running out of oxygen was annoying because it felt like a dumb thing to do and never had any repercussions.

In a contained setting this helps even more because there is so little to work with that when things logically start falling like dominoes it feels very satisfying and is instantly understandable from a viewer's perspective. 

I didn't much like the ending either, the movie has some themes and ideas but they are quite vague and don't feel all that integral to the heroes' journey. More could have been said here I think and in comparing it to the The Guilty it is very lacking. I think a reason the movie felt unsatisfying is because there is no fulfilling thematic arc and the character is posed with very unfair obstacles to overcome, usually a set-up like that promises that the hero will somehow find a way to overcome them. Even the marketing outlines how high the stacks are heaped against this guy, the hook is seeing it and finding out how this man gets out of there. The tagline is 70,000 SQ miles of desert. 90 minutes of Oxygen. No way out. If you were also told that he doesn't find a way out, then there is really no reason to watch the movie, it's more of a "no shit Sherlock" situation then. 

I think the premise promises something that the writer didn't know how to deliver. He wrote himself and the character into a corner. There is the argument that the movie isn't about him getting out and more about him accepting death, but then that should have been more of a focus and had some triumphant moment where he finally accepts his fate. The entire movie is him desperately trying to find a way out or getting people to help him, most lines of dialogue are directly related to this goal or to the fact that the government doesn't seem to value his life as much as they should. 

There is a very good moment when he gets fired over the phone and is told that his family will get no insurance of his death because he was made redundant while still alive, this is a great way to raise the stakes and make the character's situation seem even bleaker. It's not all that great when he dies anyway, with us now knowing he didn't even leave anything behind for his family. In essence the character constantly loses throughout the film, he has small victories like the snake (which just so happens to be the best scene in the film), but nothing significant. As an audience we like to see the protagonist fight and succeed, I don't think we respond that well to a character fighting and never winning, ultimately paying the ultimate price. It's depressing and not fulfilling.

I'm not saying a character can't lose or that a movie can't have a downbeat ending, but if it does there needs to be some kind of thematic triumph or character growth that occurs, a movie needs to feel like it ends somewhere different than it began and I think that's the biggest area this film tripped up on. 

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I did find it very entertaining though and enjoyed my time, helped by how efficiently it was told. Sometimes restrictions force a writer to cut out any fluff there can possibly be, you slip up with a premise like this and the audience will be instantly disengaged. 

While watching I had an idea that I think can operate as a short film:

A guy wakes up in a coffin, hears other people close to him who are annoyed by his shocked exclamations, turns out he's in purgatory.

BEATS

1. The man wakes up, fully dressed and immediately starts shouting for help as he realises he's buried in a coffin. He thinks he hears groaning nearby but isn't sure. 

2. Searches his pockets and stuff, finding his phone and some other select valuables, one of which is an old toy he had as a child. There doesn't seem to be any network but he can observe his surroundings.

3. The sound of digging, people dig down next to him, he tries calling out. The undertaker tells his young protege to ignore the voices. 

4. Finally someone close by speaks asking him to be quiet. He is shocked, there is someone else, he asks him a series of questions, the man doesn't have the answers but it sure seems like they're dead.

5. The phone has connection! The digging must have cleared up the signal, he calls home and gets the answering machine, he leaves a heartfelt message but his wife picks up, obviously she's confused and scared. 

6. He is defeated and asks the man a couple more questions, he goes to sleep.

7. Someone else is being buried in the newly dug hole next to him, the person panics immediately once the dirt starts falling on his coffin, the main character and old man are annoyed by his racket. They tell him roughly what's going on, the old man disappears. The boy next to him takes out a game machine he was buried with and annoyingly starts playing video games.

THE END