A couple nights ago I caught a rather interesting movie called “Buried” starring soon to be Green Lantern Ryan Reynolds. The conceit of the movie is interesting: an American truck driver in Iraq wakes up to find himself buried in a underground coffin. The entire film takes place in this coffin, with no flashbacks or external locations. From a production cost standpoint, it’s pure genius. The question is can the acting and direction and narrative arc carry the movie over the course of an hour and a half?

The premise itself is quite horrifying. I’ve experienced claustrophobia; the first time I ever had a panic attack was when I had a friend lock me in the truck of his car as a kind of test of manhood. So when Reynolds wakes up in a coffin as the movie begins, I found it quite disconcerting.

That claustrophobic fear is enough to keep film engaging. The movie is also a political metaphor — Reynolds, the average American, is trapped between military bureaucracy and simmering Iraqi anger, much the same way the American soldier is. However, once the movie gives away its political agenda, it limits the directions the story can move in, which makes it more predictable. Nonetheless, I would say it’s a film worth watching.

“Buried” did get me thinking about the topic of fear. Over the past couple years I’ve developed a much much better sense of what’s happening from a physiological perspective when we experience fear. And if I myself wondering whether that knowledge itself can be used to combat fear. For instance, if you find yourself in a fear inducing situation, can you simply explain to yourself that the trembling and racing heart and mind are merely the result of your limbic system reacting as it’s been programmed to do by eons of evolution? Can I take the sting out of fear? I have found over the past couple years, as I’ve read up on neuroscience, I do see more emotionally mute. Feelings don’t have the impact — either sweet or bitter — that they use to. Maybe I’m just getting old.

I would like to figure a way to eliminate fear entirely. My ideal existence would be that of a fearless unstoppable killing machine.