Review in a Hurry: Being locked in a large coffin with Ryan Reynolds for 94 minutes is probably some people's idea of heaven, but in the hands of director Rodrigo Cortes, it becomes something far more harrowing. At times so uncomfortable you'll want to look away, Reynolds' performance—essentially a one-man show—keeps you coming back for more.
The Bigger Picture: It takes both a solid actor and a visually savvy director to make a guy in a box interesting for an hour and a half, and both Reynolds, unproven in dramatic roles, and Cortes, with one other feature to his credit (the Spanish film The Contestant) could have easily misstepped. But with a variety of angles and tactics up the director's sleeve and relatable frustration and fear conveyed by the star, the result delivers a what-would-you-do? horror scenario on par with the original Saw.
Let us not forget writer Chris Sparling, whose most notable prior script was for the entertainingly titled indie An Uzi at the Alamo. He's not the first to concoct a buried-alive scenario in cinema, but he may be the first to make it a subtle satire of modern communication in addition to a nail-biter. Reynolds' Paul Conroy is a truck driver buried alive by terrorists somewhere in Iraq, deeply enough that his "grave" is apparently not visible, but shallow enough that he can both hear the occasional pertinent noise on the surface and receive a cell-phone signal.
And the cell-phone conversations Paul Conroy has, let's just say they're as frustrating as the kind most of us have, hitting voicemail, dealing with obtuse underlings who have no empathy or conception of his predicament...all while his oxygen is running out, and he has to keep from losing his temper or risk being hung up on.
Then there's the small matter of the fact that the terrorists who put him there have his number...
If you have the slightest interest in seeing the movie and can handle the claustrophobia, don't let anyone else tell you anything more.
The 180—a Second Opinion: While most of the voices on the other end of the phone are well-cast and believable, the familiar timbre of character actor Stephen Tobolowsky (Glee's Sandy Ryerson) as Conroy's boss briefly takes you out of the reality of the moment.
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