It’s no secret corporations make reliable bogey men for Hollywood films.
Corporations can be very powerful, impacting the lives of thousands of people – sometimes millions. So it makes sense that they’d be prime material for villainy. It doesn’t help that some filmmakers are suspicious of them, either due to personal experience grappling with intrusive studio suits or for more ideological reasons.
But the new to video “Buried” takes corporate bashing to new heights. The following is a scene spoiler, nothing more, but you’ve been warned.
Ryan Reynolds plays Paul, an American truck driver in Iraq who gets buried alive by insurgents, but he can reach the outside world through a cell phone. When his trucking company gets wind of his predicament it snaps into action. Someone from the company’s legal team contacts Paul and makes him read a statement confirming the trucking outfit isn’t liable for its newest ex-employee.
The firm uses a legal loophole to sack Paul in order to avoid any repercussions – or insurance claims – stemming from his plight.
Cold doesn’t begin to describe the company’s actions. But coming from a film industry which routinely paints corporations as downright wicked, it’s hardly surprising.
(Photo: Ryan Reynolds plays a man left to die in a coffin in “Buried.” Lionsgate.)
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s now off my list of “to see”. Thanks for the “spoiler”. You prevented me from “spoiling” a perfectly good date night with my wife.
It’s a frustrating film. At times, it’s truly gripping. And the concept behind the movie is excellent. But much of what transpires feels forced. It’s anti-war, but it’s also anti-everything. That doesn’t appeal to me. The ending is shocking in a smart way, though, something most films today can’t say.
OTOH, the scene could be considered a well thought out piece of writing which caters to the likely customers. Face it, the movie, like 95 percent of the genre, is totally porn for Mikey Moore fanboys and the scene a stock validation for their worldview.
It’s just too bad that you had to sit through this movie so we could avoid it. A few more like this and you could get a gig on “Dirty Jobs”.
How much does “Dirty Jobs” pay?
I had an argument over at FSR over whether this film was anti War and Anti Corporations. They of course called me a kook since it seems Hollywood never demonized Corporate America or the Military, according to them. Its too easy a target to blame capitalism, the military or America. How about blaming the people who are there and who put him in the whole since he was American.
The movie shrugs its shoulders at the insurgents’ actions – at one point someone says, if memory serves, that they’re merely protecting themselves. But I don’t think throwing an innocent trucker in a hole does that …
Its a rip-off of a Bones episode from 2 or 3 years ago…..
I hate to post anything close to an agreement with this trashy movie, but didn’t Blackwater do this with Scott Halveston’s widow?
Liquidflorian – I wasn’t aware of this. Trying to find out more via google. Anyone else know about this situation?
@Hedge66 – which was a ripoff of CSI, which was a ripoff of Kill Bill II~ and on and on…
_
Watched the movie, but skipped the raghead whining scenes. To the salient point > Why the fudge didn’t he call the CIA First?! FBI??? How about youtubing his plight at the first get go! He wasn’t on some stinking Covert maneuvers so what’ll he’ll be giving away? National Outcry would be slamming the doors at every politico almost instantly including the warmongering hating tree-huggers having new video to smear the Haliburton corp. Cabal!!! So much stupidity out of this movie I must stop writing now or this’ll be a novella of idiocy…
Toto, could you please write more articles like this? Big Hollywood’s “Sucker Punch Squad” hasn’t posted much lately, and it’s really great to know which movies to avoid so I’m not giving my hard-earned money to some hack trying to shove Leftist nonsense down my throat.
That episode of CSI was directed by Tarantino, so he was ripping off himself.