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Phone Booth
***1/2
Cinema
Reviews - Week of April 25, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
81 minutes. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Larry Cohen. Starring
Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell, Katie
Holmes, Paula Jai Parker, John Enos III, Dell Yount.
Yeah, baby! Now this is what I call a high-concept
idea: A guy enters a phone booth. Another guy calls him up, tells him there's
a sniper rifle pointed at his head, and if he leaves the booth, the gun will
be fired. He is told he cannot bargain his way out. A shot is fired, in case
he thinks the caller is bluffing. And the whole rest of the movie is set
inside the booth, depicting in real time this psychological
attack.
It was a funny thing, when the release of
"Phone Booth" was delayed in light of the sniper attacks on
Washington, D.C. last year. I found myself annoyed that I would have to wait
for a Joel Schumacher movie. Such was the excitement of this premise -- and
now here is the final product, delivering like a stormer. Schumacher has
directed the film so tightly that it runs for only 81 minutes, and the
screenplay, by Larry Cohen, shows the confidence of a writer who knows he
has a terrific starting point and plans to squeeze out every last drop of
inspiration.
Colin Farrell plays the main character, a publicist
named Stu Shepard who likes to strut along the streets of New York wearing
slick Italian suits, barking out instructions to an assistant and sleazing
his way into this deal and that one. He acts like he owns the place, and
he's a charmer and a jerk -- the only reason he's even in the phone booth
is because his wife looks over his cellphone bills, and public calls are
the only way he can contact his bit on the side.
The caller knows that. He has a lot of information
about Stu, and announces in the opening minutes of the conversation that
his reason for starting this game is moral activism. Just this week he killed
a corrupt stockbroker and a buyer of kiddie porn -- if Stu doesn't admit
to his own flaws and sins, he knows what will happen.
Because the errors of Stu are the impetus for
the sniper's plot, and because the man has been shown to be such a prick,
we know that the movie is going to hurtle to a scene where he breaks down
and admits all that he has done wrong. If the script had been written badly,
there would be a lot of dumb reasons why Stu doesn't realise what is expected
of him, so that the confession would be conveniently delayed until the final
minutes. That's not how it happens, because Cohen knows his characters. Right
from the start, Stu understands what is going on -- by the end, he hasn't
figured out new things about himself, but he feels them instead of acknowledging
them, and he's so worn down by his ordeal that he cannot keep up his act
of answering the sniper back and trying to argue his way out. Farrell is
such an intensely good actor that he makes the progression believable and
even sort of emotional.
The visceral experience of getting to that point
is nerve-wracking; the movie's delay tactics have the feel of random and
damned well unwelcome interruptions, like when a pair of hookers and their
pimp start banging on the windows of the booth and demanding to get in. After
someone is shot, things build, as the cops arrive, and so does Stu's wife,
and so does his young plaything, and so does every television news crew in
the city, and the caller makes clear that Stu cannot tell them what is going
on.
Maybe that makes the film sound like a ripoff
of "Dog Day Afternoon" or something. But it's clever. On the one hand, we
bite our nails for Stu, because he doesn't deserve the threat of death. And
yet we can appreciate where the villain is coming from, because the protagonist
of this movie does need to be taught some lessons. We hover between the two
positions, as Kiefer Sutherland makes the voice on the other end of the phone
sound scary, but with a streak of sadistic comedy. Then there are the supporting
characters, like the cop (Forest Whitaker) and the wife (Radha Mitchell)
-- they seem like people rather than pawns of the plot, and they have original
and sensitive ways of dealing with the situation. Except, they don't know
what the situation is, and so we're interested in their game plans at the
same time as feeling the frustration of Stu, who wants to tell them the score
but isn't allowed.
I can't quite bring myself to give "Phone Booth"
four stars, because I think it could have been better -- yes, it's executed
as well as it can be for what it wants to do, but it would have been more
psychologically penetrating if Stu had seemed to be a nice guy, and his stalker
had picked him apart through getting at the subtle ways we all do wrong and
holding them up to the light. Then again, I said that to a friend the other
day, and realised that I was basically describing "Changing Lanes". So perhaps
I'm being unfair -- "Phone Booth" is what it is, and that is more than
enough.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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