Crazy: Buried With Ryan Reynolds Is Really A One-Man Show

Just a week ago we reported on Buried, the indie thriller about a civilian contractor in Iraq who is kidnapped and buried alive, to be played by Ryan Reynolds. Now The Playlist got quotes from an Autralian TV interview with Reynolds, who says the movie is all him, all the time. One man, one coffin, one crazy thriller.

Buried is the story about a guy who's buried (laughs). It's the only movie I've ever heard of with only one person in it. So it's just me, I'm the only person in the whole movie so, I don't know, we'll see. It's either going to be, you know, the greatest, most experimental cool movie ever made or god knows what.

Furthermore, ScriptShadow has a brief script review, which calls Buried "top-notch storytelling". The script sounds like eighty pages of ticking clocks, with tension all over the place. Hereare two scene-setting paragraphs. Guess this could be called spoilerish if you're ridiculously militant about that sort of thing.

Paul, an American truck driver in Iraq, has just woken up in a coffin. It's burning up. Hot as balls. Lack of oxygen makes it hard to breathe. And let's not forget the coffin, which only allows him a few inches of room in every direction. I will offer this warning right now: If you are claustrophobic, do not read this script.

At first Paul has no memory of how he got here. But things start slowly coming back to him. He was driving a truck, delivering food, when there was a loud explosion. Many of his co-workers were killed but somehow he wasn't. He remembers Iraqis coming towards him. But after that? Nothing. Now he's down here, in a grave, in Iraq.

Consider not just the confinement of being buried alive, but the heat of being in a shallow grave in Iraq. What about the danger of artillery and bombs? There are other elements to the story, too, but I'll let you read the full piece at ScriptShadow if you want to know more.

But as far as Buried being the first movie with only one actor, nope. Someone get Reynolds a copy of Robert Altman's Secret Honor, featuring a remarkable performance from Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon. Not the first one-man movie, but the first that comes to mind, and a great one to boot.