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MOVIE REVIEW
Phone Booth
(2003)
Starring:
Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland
Director:
Joel Schumacher
Rating: R
Studio:
20th Century Fox
Review
Posted: 4.14.03
Spoilers:
Major
By Sara Michelle Fetters
"Farrell
Rings True Even if the Call is Too Long"
Colin Farrell
is another in a long line of Hollywood “stars” made, processed
and delivered as such before they’ve really earned the
distinction. Granted, in Farrell’s case, he does have talent.
That’s been evident from his debut film Tigerland to his
strong supporting work up against superstars like Tom Cruise (Minority
Report) and Al Pacino (The
Recruit) all the way to his scene stealing work – and
the only redeeming value – in
Daredevil. He’s going to be a star, and if none of the
film’s he’s headlined as of yet have made it so that’s sure to
change in the near future.
It’s unlikely
Joel Schumacher’s new film Phone Booth is going to do it
for him. Nothing more than an elongated episode of The
Twilight Zone stretched a good thirty minutes past its
breaking point, Farrell is nonetheless mesmerizing, elevating
this throw-away B-grade thriller to a level it probably doesn’t
really deserve. Who cares? As slight, over-the-top pulp
thrillers go, I’ve seen a heck of a lot worse than this, and for
most of Phone Booth’s running time I was suitably
entertained.
Farrell plays
Stuart "Stu" Shepard, a New York publicist whose mouth moves
more expeditiously than a fast moving subway. He’s shrewd,
manipulative, nasty and your basic royal prick. He’ll trade
concert tickets for celebrity dirt and then turn around and
divulge that info to a scandal sheet as to get his own clients
play in the gossip columns. Stu’s humanity is as short as the
day is long, and he’ll sell you the shirt of his assistant’s
back if he thinks it will gain him percentage points or the
cover of the hottest entertainment magazine.
Each day Stu
takes a walk through the crowded inner city streets of the city,
making his way to 53rd and 8th, the
vestige of the last walk-in phone booth in all of New York City.
It is here, across the street from the seedy City Hotel, he
takes off his wedding band and phones his latest pretty young
client Pam (Katie Holmes). Each day he tries to talk her into
coming down to the hotel and meet him for a few drinks and to
discuss her career, and each day she tells him she can’t,
graciously telling him they will get together soon.
What Stu
doesn’t tell Pam is that he’s been fantasizing having sex with
her since they first met. In fact, Stuart hasn’t even told the
aspiring actress that he’s married, using a phone booth to make
calls to her so as his wife can’t check his cellular records and
see who he’s been talking to each day. But then, he doesn’t tell
many of the people in his life all that he does during the day,
and one or two lies that keep reality in the dark from loved
ones never hurt – or led to divorce court. And as Stu loves his
wife Kelly (Radha Mitchell) dearly, he’d much rather she knew
nothing of his clandestine fantasies. Besides, he’ll never
actually act out on them.
Lies, however,
hurt everyone they touch, no matter how big or how small they
are, a lesson Stu is about learn. Upon exiting the booth, the
phone begins to ring. Thinking it must be Pam calling him back,
Stu answers excitedly only to discover it is in fact a
riddle-talking madman who seemingly knows all of the intimate
details in Stuart’s life. Convinced Stu is nothing more than a
demon, a leach sucking out the lifeblood of the very marrow of
human existence, he tells him in no plain terms how utterly
despicable he thinks the fast-talking publicist really is.
If that were
all, Stu could have into the caller with a few of the choice
expletives he’s so good at throwing around. If there were
nothing more, he could hang up the phone and walk away, leaving
the man and his higher morals stew in their own juices. But with
a high caliber rifle and their telescopic sites set directly on
his head, it will take all of Stuart’s verbal gymnastics to get
him out of this phone booth.
And here it is,
ladies and gentleman, an entire 90-minute movie primarily set
inside the cramped confines of a phone booth. It is easy to see
why so many big name actors; Cruise, Jim Carrey, Will Smith:
were so keen on Larry Cohen’s (It’s Alive, Q: The
Winged Serpent) script. Stu Shepard is an actor’s wet dream.
In nearly every scene, the film itself rising and falling
squarely upon the man playing him, this is the type of character
actors can make legends of themselves playing.
Or jackasses,
which is probably exactly why all of those bigger named actors
ended up passing on the role; it’s a lot of pressure to have a
feature film resting upon one performer, and it takes an actor
with nothing to lose to pull it off. A superstar, by the very
nature of the terminology, already has a career and image to
uphold, so taking risks of the magnitude required in Phone
Booth just aren’t worth the cost/benefit analysis.
That’s why this
role is so suited to Farrell. An actor on the way up he’s got
nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking him on. A
chance to make an indelible impression in the minds of critics
and audiences alike, the actor jumps into Stu Shepard without
abandon. He’s lithe, manipulative, supercilious, frantic,
soulful, pained and emotional. It’s the gymnastic routines of
performances, Farrell galvanizing the screen from first frame to
last.
If only the
film itself were more worth the effort. There is a reason Cohen
is known as one of the true soldiers of B-grade filmmaking. His
movies, from The Stuff to Maniac Cop, are junky,
hard-boiled and aggressively agitated adventures resting in the
pulp mores of bygone era. It also means that, nine times out of
ten, his scripts and films are also of a variety not quite ready
for prime time. Phone Booth is a television episode
masquerading as a feature film, only so much tension and
excitement able to be squeezed from watching a man trapped in a
cubicle for an hour and a half.
Schumacher
clearly knows this and does his best to hide the fact. His
camera is constantly on the prowl; shifting and ranging all over
the place, doing it’s best to keep the audience off their feet.
But slick tricks and fancy editing can only get you so far, and
by the time the police slowly start to figure out what is really
going on I was on the verge of losing interest.
But only on the
verge, for Farrell had me spellbound. It is interesting to note
that a director as recently mediocre as Schumacher (Batman &
Robin, Flawless, 8mm) has somehow found
something approaching redemption when in league with the
talented Farrell. It is also interesting to note that the actors
two high water performances have come when working for
Schumacher, in Tigerland and now here. Maybe by working
together the two have hitched on to something that clicks, each
knowing the other so well that they can’t help but elevate their
games to a higher level. Who knows?
Too bad the
same can’t be said for the rest of the cast in Phone Booth.
Granted, it’s not their fault. The only fully realized character
is Farrell’s, so the fact that the immensely talented Mitchell,
Holmes, Richard T. Jones and Forrest Whitaker are left with
virtually nothing to do but react to Shepard’s shifting
emotional state. Granted, there is one other presence that does
make an impression, and that’s the voice on the phone, proving
once and for all a certain 24 actor may only be as good
as the telephone he’s coldly speaking in to.
All in
all, Phone Booth is a film trying too hard to do so very
little. Yet, thanks to a bravura turn by Farrell and an
unnerving villainous presence, it still manages to entertain.
With so many films failing to even do that, it’s hard not to
call Phone Booth a ringing success.
Rating: 3
out of 4
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