Cinepub

Oh boy, this one’s going to be difficult because to do a decent plot synopsis, I feel that I’d have to give away far too much of the story… So, for a synopsis let’s just say that Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver working in Iraq who awakens to find himself buried alive with nothing but (initially) a lighter, a knife, a pencil, his empty wallet and a mobile phone. Throughout the course of the film he uses the phone to contact various people, including the police in America, his family, the hostage takers themselves and people at a group set up to help people taken hostage in Iraq, in order to try and get him released from his predicament.

That’s pretty much the basic outline of the film and all I feel particularly comfortable telling you about the story without giving too much away. What will say is that this film is fucking awesome. It’s hard to believe that such a simple idea could produce such a tense and intriguing story but it does and it does it excellently. It’s the perfect antidote to ‘Devil’ if you had the misfortune to watch that as well. It’s incredible how a film about five people trapped in a box is so utterly and completely dull whilst this film about one man trapped in a box kept me on the edge of my seat.

Now, I’ll admit that this film probably isn’t for everybody. I heard a few people moaning and complaining that the film was crap but I have a feeling this are probably the small minority. Also they were laughing like fucking retarded hyenas during the film so I don’t think their opinions are exactly the ones you’d really want to trust anyway. Douchebags. If you‘re not that kind of person but instead you can actually sit there and allow yourself to be drawn into what is a fantastically engaging story then I‘m sure you‘ll enjoy it.

That’s not to say that the film isn’t without it’s problems, the main one being that I’m fairly sure an episode of ‘Mythbusters’ proved the basic premise of the film, that someone could be buried underground for any extended period of time, to essentially be highly, highly unlikely if not outright impossible. Still, maybe the writer didn’t see that episode.

The stand out performance in this film is, unsurprisingly, that of Ryan Reynolds. I didn’t realise just how good of an actor he actually is. His panic in this situation is palpable and yet it still occasionally tinted with the sense of humour that still keeps me hoping he’ll play Deadpool someday (and properly this time). It’s actually made me look forward to the Green Lantern film something I didn’t really care about that much before because, if I’m honest, I’m just not that big a fan of the character.

So in conclusion , if you’re not a fucking idiot, go and see this film. See it as soon as humanly possible. The last scene in particular left me shaking when I walked out of the cinema and only one film I know of has ever done that to me before and that was ‘The Dark Knight’. Four and a half pints out of five.