"Buried" Features Ryan Reynolds and an Oddly Powerful Cell Phone

Paul (Ryan Reynolds), an American truck driver for a KBR-type contractor in Iraq, is captured in an insurgent attack and wakes up buried in a coffin, totally defenseless but for a Zippo, a pencil, a flask, a flashlight, anti-anxiety meds, and someone else's cell phone. He uses the latter to make a series of increasingly hysterical calls for help, which function as both vehicles for basic exposition ("Is this 9-1-1? I'm buried in the middle of the desert") and microdramas that slowly sketch the details of Paul's character (although not well enough for us to know if, when he calls his wife's friend a "stupid fucking cunt," it's because he's a dick or because the claim is legitimate). Director Rodrigo Cortes keeps the action bound to the box, limiting his lighting to naturalistic approximations, so that much of Reynolds' performance consists of him grunting and heaving in the dark. Fair enough, as long as Buried is a movie about being, uh, buried, but not so great when it tries to comment on bureaucracy and foreign policy. "I didn't know it was going to be like this here," Paul wails to a British hostage-situation-fixer guy, who responds, somberly, "I don't think any of us did." That sentiment might have been easier to take seriously if the voice of Iraqi terrorism wasn't played by a Spanish actor whose double-accented, stunted English calls to mind a very, very angry Taco Bell spokesdog.