phonebooth

A movie is pretty ballsy if it can take place entirely in a phone booth. But then we're talking about Joel Schumacher! Batman & Robin, 8MM, Falling Down. Of course this is also the same man who directed "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" starring Lily Tomlin and a man in a monkey suit, but I digress.....

Collin Farrell is a hot up and coming actor who stars as a publicist that is so engrossed in his arrogance with clients that he seems to step on anyone who gets in the way of what he wants. He wants to make things happen for him, he lives in a tech world where cell phones and palm pilots rule. But every day at a certain time, he steps into one of those old fashion dirty phone booths that you can only seem to find on streets where hookers and crackheads reside, to make a phonecall to a girl. She's young and naive, and not his wife. He's contemplating a relationship with her, he seems to be at a crossroads in his life.

But the phone rings. A man on the other end wants to talk to him. He seems to know him, and as Stu (Farrell) finds out, he doesn't seem like a stranger at all. He wants Stu to confess his sins before he dies. The man is sitting at a nearby window on the street, one of the hundreds of annonymous windows out there. And he's holding a gun.

"Phone Booth" starts off kind of like one of those botchy documentaries, multiple camera shots on a single screen with washed out colors and jagged camerawork. Farrell seems believably a conceited snot , or maybe he's just a confident loser? In any case he is told not to leave the booth or he will die. Some local hookers rile things up, and before you know it the cops show up thinking that Stu in fact is a shooter. Pretty soon the entire city's police force shows up with the news networks hoping for a gore shot. He can't tell them who is on the phone and what is going on, he can only do what the caller tells him to do. And as his wife and girlfriend show up, that makes things to be a little more hairy than he'd like. Will he do anything to save his own life? Even change his life?

Performance-wise it's a fair romp. Whitaker seems to come across as the same guy in many of his films, that hardened individual who has some bit of insight and compassion that others around him don't. Sutherland plays the sniper/caller, that raspy voice seems to land him quite a few bad guy roles these days. Is he bad, or just crazy? Maybe I thought they overdid it a bit, I mean how long do I have to sit and watch a man find redemption in a phonebooth? I'd rather watch superman changing in there! It wasn't a long film, which these days is impressive! So a worthwhile afternoon flick.

Well, maybe it was just a little too preachy for me. So shoot me, I wasn't blown away.

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