Fridae

There’s few tests for a filmmaker like a one-man show, from Robert Altman’s portrayal of Nixon in Secret Honor to the monologue films of Spalding Gray. The budget is limited, the setting is confined, and the lone cast member and his intrepid must wring everything that they can out of their limits to make a cinematic experience out of a far more theatrical act.

Buried is a one-man show that tries to recreate the Hitchcockian experience, in which suspense is knowing that there’s a bomb under the table but not when it would explode. For Paul Conroy, played in a tour de force performance by Ryan Reynolds, it’s knowing that he’s somehow buried alive, but not knowing why or how he got there, or how long he has to live. Filmed in real-time, it’s soon revealed that he has but 90 minutes out of this deathtrap in which he only has a cellphone and lighter to comply with the demands of his captors and to get the most help he can from his rescuers.

Perhaps due to it being made in Europe (Spain to be specific) despite its American cast (Samantha Mathis and Stephen Tobolowsky do voice over work as some of the characters Paul converses with), Buried also takes its chances with being a political statement the way Italian Westerns and crime films tried to in the past. Reynolds is a civilian contractor who was the victim of a guerrilla ambush and is essentially held hostage for cash from the United States government, one of the few profitable businesses in the devastated postwar economy of Iraq. For him, bringing freedom and democracy mean nothing next to the comfort of a solid paycheck and the lure of a solid job...the same sort of financial gain his captors are after. Money is the most unifying of driving forces, its power stronger than any ideology, “terrorist” and “hero” are mere labels. And in his unique situation, he finds out a profound truth of the enveloping potency and yet absolute powerlessness of power itself, especially when faced with the thousand chaotic factors that could go wrong in the fog of war when politics, profit and human nature simply do not create the desired outcome or result that power desires.

Rodrigo Cortes creates and holds a competently executed thriller with few resources and a lot of talent, and it should be worth seeing what projects await this Spanish Hitchcock in the near future.