‘Brake’ writes itself into a box

Upon finding himself trapped in a Lucite coffin in the opening minutes of the silly thriller “Brake,” Secret Service agent Jeremy Reins (Stephen Dorff) figures he’s being shaken down for his outstanding gambling debts. Upon finding yourself trapped with Dorff for 91 minutes, you may correctly remember that Rodrigo Cortés’ 2010 morality play “Buried” took the same, single-setting premise to places far more interesting than the empty cynicism found here.

Agent Reins quickly learns that the stakes are bigger than those at the card games he frequents. Terrorists have abducted him and if he doesn’t reveal the location of the president’s secret underground bunker, they will kill Reins, his estranged wife and the family of the State Department worker he’s been communicating with via CB radio.

Yes, Reins’ glass tank comes equipped with a CB as well as a digital timer that counts down time increments of various lengths. Once the clock reads zero, the kidnappers unleash a new form of torture into the coffin in order to prod him to talk. But since it’s quickly established that our hero is resolute and will never spill the beans, director Gabe Torres cannot wring much suspense from the peril even when the scope of the terrorists’ plot becomes clear.

So we stay with Dorff in the box, waiting to see how Torres and screenwriter Timothy Mannion pry the lid off. They deliver two twists, the second even more preposterous than its predecessor and, in the process, negate both common sense and the previous hour and a half.

“Brake.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes. At Laemmle’s NoHo 7, North Hollywood.