Buried- and my most delayed reaction to date

At first glance, Rodrigo Cortes's latest film format seems to be extremely monotonous, in that it consists of a man in a box(Paul Conroy-Ryan Reynolds), but it's orchestration is so maddeningly nerve-bending that you almost forget that you're simply watching a man's adventures within the confines of about six square feet. The concept alone of being buried alive is one I was forced to come to grips with during Kill Bill Vol.2 and Misfits, but one with which I'm clearly none too comfortable.

More on my own feelings later, but the construction of the film deserves a positive mention at the very least. The sheer volume of camera angles, mixture of light - or lack of light, much of the film played out in total darkness, with nothing but heavy breathing and your imagination to light Paul's prison as he bounces from emotion to emotion with heart-wrenching precision. Through his more hysterical moments there's some tensely dark humour:

911 lady: 5 million dollars?

Paul: Yeah he says he needs 5 million dollars by nine PM

911 lady: Or what?

Paul: Or he's gonna take me to seaworld, the **** do you think?

You'll be wetting and crapping yourself in equal measure.

Myself, I admit I believed to be quite dandy throughout the film, with the odd bout of nausea through out the more claustrophobic scenes, but I was wrong. As soon as I stepped on to the bus home my entire body began to shake, my brow dampening and my chest constricting as the 75 pulled out of the bus stop. I wanted to scream: Get me off this bus for christ's sake I'm going to die on here! but obviously that wasn't really an option. So I sat tight and worked my way through my ipod library in a desperate attempt to regain my normal cycle of ventilation.

The film also hits hard politically, the setting being a box under Iraq, and much of the plot revolving around military action in the area. During the film (while you're "in" the box) there's not only a feel of entrapment, but of isolation, as the media storm around Paul's situation grows without his knowledge, the people he calls (he has a phone) all sharing information about him while he festers under the ground.

In summary, Buried is by far the writer (Chris Sparling)'s best work to date, and an incredibly touching, then holding, and shaking to within an inch of one's life piece of entertainment, exactly what it says on the box

9/10