The new thriller from
action-movie veteran Joel Schumacher (Flatliners,
Batman and Robin,
Tigerland) gives the biggest,
flashiest role yet to rising star Colin Farrell (Minority Report,
Daredevil.)
Phone Booth
bears a unique distinction:
About 90% of the movie takes place with the camera focused on a glass
box with the hero trapped inside.
Farrell plays Stu Shepard, a self-loving,
unfaithfully married New York publicist who spends his days pacing the
streets with his cell phone to his ear, organizing deals to make hot
celebrities hotter, signing contracts for magazine covers and media
spots. His daily ritual includes one last call from downtown’s last
functional phone booth—a flirtatious call to Pam, a sexy restaurateur
(Katie Holmes). Calling from the booth is not a nostalgic or romantic
habit so much as it is Shepard’s effort to keep Pam’s phone number off
his cell phone record. That way, his wife Kelly (Radha Mitchell) doesn’t
find out about it.
But on this particular day, someone is looking down
on Stu with deep moral disapproval. This self-appointed hand of God’s
judgment—the same nasty species of bad guy that made quite an impression
in Seven—is intent on punishing Stu for his sins.
So he calls the phone booth and Stu picks it up. At
first, Stu laughs at the villains threats, but when a passerby is shot
dead as an example, and surrounding pedestrians think Stu fired the
shot, he begins to realize the gravity of situation. So begins the
tormenting, taunting, and moral education of Mr. Shepard.
Voiced by
Kiefer Sutherland with all the menace and gleeful cackles of Vincent
Price, this anonymous sniper remains hidden somewhere in the vast jungle
of skyscrapers. He keeps the red dot of his sniper rifle on Stu’s
expensive shirt through a long series of sweat-inducing trials,
threatening him while the news cameras roll and the world mistakes Stu
for a crazed killer. Meanwhile, a quick-thinking policeman (Forrest
Whitaker) tries to find a resolution even as he wonders whether Stu is a
murderer, a madman, or just a guy who got caught in the wrong place at
the wrong time.
I’ve never been a Schumacher fan—he exploits style
and violence for the sake of entertainment and rarely has much
substantive to offer. (He followed Tim Burton’s edgy Batman films
with two shallow and uncompelling sequels.) But Phone Booth is
better than his previous outings because of the strength of its simple,
central morality play. The script by Larry Cohen is occasionally clever,
its preposterous twists nothing more than potholes on an otherwise
engaging ride. Schumacher plays effectively
with split-screen effects, sometimes giving us multiple windows within
the main picture so we can see the activities of the “significant
others” in Stu’s life. The music, slick cinematography, and the
commanding star-turn by Farrell keep us alert, if not quite biting our
nails as they intend.
I have one major complaint: Sutherland’s voice was
never treated to sound like it was coming over a phone line. It sounds
instead like a Mystery Science Theater guy doing a tongue-in-cheek
ad-lib with a microphone in the back of the cinema.
There is no genius or intimidating intelligence in his lectures either.
He comes across merely as a bully with a god complex. His familiarity as a
Stock Villain Voice keeps him from ever really frightening us.
But for a studio blockbuster, Phone Booth
puts unusual emphasis on the moral ultimatum being delivered to its
central character. I like the way the film uses the old-fashioned phone
booth to show how cell phones have contributed to our illusion of
independence, control, and immunity. This remnant of the last century
serves to remind Stu that he is not so secure as he thinks; his sins
will hurt him and his loved ones no matter how he tries to conceal them.
It’s enough to make you wonder about those things in your own life that
you like to think are secret. It just might put the fear of God… or at
least the fear of voyeuristic snipers… in enough viewers to do some
good.
But then again, fear is the basest of motivations.
There are better reasons to be honest and faithful than mere
self-preservation! Alas, protecting himself is all that Stu has on his
mind, even at the end of his trial. In that sense, Phone Booth
serves to glorify its villain, concluding that this arrogant caller who
has set himself up as some kind of avenging angel is actually a pretty
smart guy who, like Hannibal Lecter, uses evil as a means to achieve
some greater end.
Thus, Phone Booth stands
out as a solid 90 minutes of well-intentioned entertainment, but it
probably will do more to fuel urban paranoia and to boost Colin
Farrell's career than it will to make anybody re-examine their lives.
Jeffrey's Rating:
B-
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explanation of ratings.
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