← Back to Reviews
in
Phone Booth
It doesn't quite measure up to his masterpiece Falling Down, but the late Joel Schumacher has crafted an improbable and claustrophobic little nail-biter called Phone Booth that manages to rivet the viewer to the screen as long as they don't think about it too much.
The 2002 film stars Colin Farrell as Stu Shepherd, a slick-talking, smart-ass show business publicist who has several irons in the fire, but takes the time to get off his cell phone so that he can enter a phone booth, take off his wedding ring, so that he can call his new girlfriend, presumably so his wife doesn't discover the call on his cell. After completing the call, Stu starts to leave the booth and it immediately starts ringing. For some reason, he decide to answer it and finds himself talking to someone who seems to know everything about his life and for some reason, wants Stu to confess to his wife that he is cheating on her. In order to make sure Stu takes him seriously, the caller actually murders someone and makes sure the police and everyone else thinks he did it.
Screenwriter Larry Cohen is to be credited for setting the story in a time when the entire communications industry was in a serious state of flux. In 2002, cellular phones were still kind of a novelty, something reserved for the rich, powerful, and most importantly, self-absorbed. Land lines and phone booths were still around but they were beginning to disappear, but as we learn at the beginning of this film, this phone booth located at the corner of 53rd and 8th in Manhattan, is one of the few for miles around, supposedly legitimizing the presence of a pimp and his girls using the phone to run their business, which initially comes off as stupid, but gets serious pretty quickly. The screenplay leaves a lot of unanswered questions and I think this is because a lot of them don't have answers. We never learn exactly who this caller is or how or why he does this, but from what he asks of Stu, it's likely that he's not a stranger, but we're never told for sure.
Where the film really scores is in the often inventive and overheated direction by Schumacher that gives the film an importance that it might not really deserve. Schumacher's variation on the split screen film technique is, at times, distracting, but it forces complete viewer attention because we just don't see a simple phone call bringing police and SWAT, but effortlessly keeping them perplexed and at a safe distance. The over the phone cat and mouse eventually reaches a fever pitch; however, the ending left a bad taste in the mouth.
Colin Ferrell's overheated performance perfectly fits the story and he is matched perfectly by Keifer Sutherland, who is nothing short of superb as the menacing and dangerous caller. Forest Whitaker scores as the perplexed police office trying to figure out what's going on, as well as Richard T. Jones as a cop and Rahda Mitchell as Stu's wife. There's fun to be had here as long as you don't take it too seriously.
It doesn't quite measure up to his masterpiece Falling Down, but the late Joel Schumacher has crafted an improbable and claustrophobic little nail-biter called Phone Booth that manages to rivet the viewer to the screen as long as they don't think about it too much.
The 2002 film stars Colin Farrell as Stu Shepherd, a slick-talking, smart-ass show business publicist who has several irons in the fire, but takes the time to get off his cell phone so that he can enter a phone booth, take off his wedding ring, so that he can call his new girlfriend, presumably so his wife doesn't discover the call on his cell. After completing the call, Stu starts to leave the booth and it immediately starts ringing. For some reason, he decide to answer it and finds himself talking to someone who seems to know everything about his life and for some reason, wants Stu to confess to his wife that he is cheating on her. In order to make sure Stu takes him seriously, the caller actually murders someone and makes sure the police and everyone else thinks he did it.
Screenwriter Larry Cohen is to be credited for setting the story in a time when the entire communications industry was in a serious state of flux. In 2002, cellular phones were still kind of a novelty, something reserved for the rich, powerful, and most importantly, self-absorbed. Land lines and phone booths were still around but they were beginning to disappear, but as we learn at the beginning of this film, this phone booth located at the corner of 53rd and 8th in Manhattan, is one of the few for miles around, supposedly legitimizing the presence of a pimp and his girls using the phone to run their business, which initially comes off as stupid, but gets serious pretty quickly. The screenplay leaves a lot of unanswered questions and I think this is because a lot of them don't have answers. We never learn exactly who this caller is or how or why he does this, but from what he asks of Stu, it's likely that he's not a stranger, but we're never told for sure.
Where the film really scores is in the often inventive and overheated direction by Schumacher that gives the film an importance that it might not really deserve. Schumacher's variation on the split screen film technique is, at times, distracting, but it forces complete viewer attention because we just don't see a simple phone call bringing police and SWAT, but effortlessly keeping them perplexed and at a safe distance. The over the phone cat and mouse eventually reaches a fever pitch; however, the ending left a bad taste in the mouth.
Colin Ferrell's overheated performance perfectly fits the story and he is matched perfectly by Keifer Sutherland, who is nothing short of superb as the menacing and dangerous caller. Forest Whitaker scores as the perplexed police office trying to figure out what's going on, as well as Richard T. Jones as a cop and Rahda Mitchell as Stu's wife. There's fun to be had here as long as you don't take it too seriously.