Sundance 2010: Buried

Sundance has a habit of turning up a genuine oddity that either goes supernova or becomes a niche cult item for those who've heard of it. Into the former category I'd put The Blair Witch Project and Donnie Darko; into the latter, I'd put The Machinist, Fido and Primer. The thing about Buried is that I don't know which way it will go: at the screening I attended, director Rodrigo Cortes announced, “It's about a guy in a coffin. You're still here? I said, it's about a guy in a coffin!” He's right. But I think part of the appeal of this film is seeing how it's done. Because, although there is a surprisingly extensive cast list, Buried is a 90-minute movie about a single, solitary man that never once moves away from the situation it's showing.

And that situation is intense; Paul Conroy ( Ryan Reynolds), a contract lorry driver working in Iraq, wakes up to find himself in a wooden box, several feet under the ground. He struggles to get free, but the soil is pressing down too heavily on the lid, and while he is trying to gain his bearings, a mobile phone (that isn't his) rings. It transpires that Conroy has been kidnapped by insurgents. His colleagues have all been murdered, and he has only been spared because his kidnappers are demanding a ransom of $5 million from the US government. Conroy has just two hours to find the money, and over the next 90 minutes he makes a series of phone calls that are literally a matter of life or death. But Buried isn't just a series of talking heads, and the major triumph of Cortes' incredibly ingenious film is that there are actually moments of high action within such a confined space. That it works is partly down to his visual sophistication – the opening credits are amazing – but a lot rests on Reynolds in the lead, and he makes a very sympathetic everyman.

If you're claustrophobic or squeamish (Cortes manages to bring in two inspired, violent sequences without ever cutting away), Buried is definitely not for you. Because what it does so brilliantly is to put you there too and invite you to wonder how you'd react (although most of us would never risk the job in the first place), and unlike the likes of Open Water, or Frozen (this year's Open Water, in which three skiers get trapped on a ski lift in a remote forest), it doesn't require much contrivance to set the scene. If I had to criticise, I'd say the film seems a little stretched at times, and I'm not sure it necessarily needed to cross the 90-minute mark. And there's another thing that might hamper its commercial chances in the UK, but if I even hint at it, I run the risk of spoiling the movie. But for now, all I'll say is, if you're still reading and you're curious, Buried is most definitely for you.