It was another one of those Anti-American, or simply 'corporate greed' type affairs which we have seen a lot of. Nothing new came out of it. Had I known, I probably wouldn't have seen it in the cinema.
I didn't buy his employer telephoning him to advise him that he had been retrospectively fired so they can't get sued or his family can't claim insurance. That recording of big corporate company trying to protect its money vs desperate hostage burried in Iraq, minutes from death, just would not wash.
They didn't build on Paul's character at all, we didn't learn much of anything about his relationships with his family/frienRAB - only a superficial glance. As a result, it was hard to feel anything for him.
Even though he was stuck in a box, you never really felt that he was 'confined'. Maybe that was due to the fact that they have to shoot the film from different angles which took away from the feeling of being confined and gave the impression that the coffin was bigger than we were sometimes led to believe. In the film 'The Descent' you get the feeling that you are trapped in the cave with the girls. You feel afraid, you feel that sense of desperation that there is no way out. I didn't here, even though we didn't see any flashbacks and stayed with Paul for the whole movie.
He had a limited oxygen supply but he survived through the whole film without much of a problem.
His mobile phone battery lasted through the whole film, he was in credit too and he had sufficient reception throughout the movie despite being underground? His lighter lasted through the whole film??
The snake was a bit of a ridiculous filler and wasn't necessary.
Slicing his finger off was only to add gore - we knew how desperate he was at this point in the movie so it didn't add anything. Unlike for example in Saw (where Dr Gordan's frustration had built to such an incredible state that he couldn't take it anymore and had to do anything to free himself to save his family.)
If anything, we knew from the get go that Paul would die because a) they immedaitely revealed that they were not going to 'neogitate with terrorists' and so the ransom would never be paid and b) there seemed to be little interest in finding him, they couldn't even track his phone. The primary interest appeared to be the usual thing - covering up the story from the world. So I never expected him to be found in time.
When they said they had found Mark White - I was expecting that there was some massive plot twist. There wasn't though. It was what you had expected all along with the 'corporate greed' theme. The guy on the phone had been telling him a pack of lies.