| PHONE BOOTH |
 2002 - USADirector:
Joel Schumacher - Reviewed by Vickie
Of course, people will also learn that what goes around comes around, if someone offers you a free pizza you should take it, no selfish deed goes unpunished and Kiefer Sutherland once again confirms he's really, really good at playing characters who are really, really bad. Based on the 1996 short film End of the Line by director Paul Hough, the movie takes place in the title location when self-absorbed, big-shot entertainment publicist Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell) wanders in to make his covert daily call to an aspiring actress (Katie Holmes) he's been stringing along. (He doesn't use his cell phone because his wife checks the numbers.) But someone's been watching Stu lately, making note of how he treats people (poorly), how he lives his life (based on image and lies) and how he comes to the exact same phone booth every day at the same time. This voyeuristic sniper (who's hiding in a nearby building somewhere) decides to turn the tables on our egocentric hero and calls him on said pay phone, threatening to shoot him if he hangs up or steps out of the booth. The anonymous caller (Sutherland) blasts a toy to pieces and offs an annoying local outside the booth just to prove he has the firepower. Stu quickly goes from defiant, abusive skeptic to panicked believer. So Stu, a gifted weasel who lives his life with cell phones surgically attached to his ears and who operates under an elaborate web of lies and half-truths, is now forced to use nothing but his gift of gab to keep himself, and his loved ones, alive. All the while, our "noble" caller, who considers himself somewhat of a well-armed moral barometer of society, attempts to terrify Stu into realizing that his high-rolling lifestyle is a crime against humanity. Repent or die. That's his charming offer. Now, you'd think a movie set in one very small location might wear thin after a while. Phone Booth doesn't. It's a gripping, entertaining, holy-crap-this-is-fun thriller that basically consists of two people talking on the phone. The role of Stu originally attracted the attention of people like Jim Carrey and Will Smith, but it's hard to imagine anyone with that kind of star power being believable in the part. Having someone like Colin Farrell is perfect casting. He's still anonymous enough that we don't see the actor, but the stressed-out character he's playing as his facade of toughness slowly fades, sweat begins to bead on his brow and he's subjected to relentless psychological torture by a stranger on the other end of the line. Schumacher also employs some clever techniques in his storytelling to maintain the film's frenetic pace. There are split screen effects that recall the multi-story quadrants of Timecode, and picture-in-picture images that help keep the action moving simultaneously between various characters. The look of the film is kind of a hybrid between his Tigerland (grainy DV) and Flatliners (lots of blues, greys and big, old buildings), and the kind-of-see-it-coming ending, for me, was satisfying despite its cliché. Phone Booth is highly entertaining and provides a curious social commentary on the perils of ego and the benefits of living a decent life. It also makes you dread walking past a bank of pay phones lest one of them ring and someone who hates you says "Hello." Yikes. |
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If there's one lesson audiences should take away from Joel Schumacher's
nail-biter of a suspense film it's this: never answer a phone just
because it's ringing.
