Alfred Hitchcock, eat your heart out. Sure, the master of suspense set himself some tough challenges with limited scenarios: "Lifeboat" took place entirely within the title craft, "Rear Window" didn't stray from Jimmy Stewart's apartment, and "Rope" stuck mostly to an unbroken take. But Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés wants to do the master one better: "Buried" is set inside a coffin, buried beneath a few feet of immovable earth. Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up inside the coffin, a cell phone and lighter next to him; for the next 90 minutes, we won't leave the narrow space of that wooden box. No cheats: no flashbacks to Paul's past, no cross-cutting with efforts to free him. Cortés sticks to the rules and follows his story out to its conclusion, and in the process he must think of every possible way to shoot and light someone in a confined space. Seems Paul was in Iraq as a non-military truck driver when he got caught in some crossfire, and somebody wants to make a point. The cell phone allows him to speak, and try to puzzle out what's happening, but except for the voices on the other end, this is entirely Ryan Reynolds's show. The actor is up for it: although he can't use his body, he calls on both his action-movie chops and (at certain exasperating moments) his comic talents. By definition, this is a bravura turn, and Reynolds comes through firing on all cylinders. "Buried" is an exercise, but it manages to sneak in a few sly suggestions about the nature of an American's presence in the Middle East. It even earns points for an excellent credits sequence--a clever nod to Hitchcock classics. Somehow you suspect the master would approve. "--Robert Horton"