Review: The Call

Halle Berry plays a veteran 911 emergency operator who loses her nerve somewhat after call ends really badly through a mistake someone of her experience shouldn’t have made. After spending some time in a training role, she finds herself reluctantly pulled back in to the job when a call comes in from an abducted young woman (Abigail Breslin), who is currently stuck in the boot of the car of a disturbed man (Michael Eklund). Now it’s up to Berry to save the girl and thwart Eklund’s nasty plans. The kicker? Eklund is the same nutso killer from the incident that saw Berry take a hiatus from active duty is a 911 operator! Roma Maffia and Jose Zuniga play work colleagues, whilst Morris Chestnut and David Otunga are cops, the former also being Berry’s boyfriend.

 

Before it climaxes with an unfortunate thud as Halle Berry goes above and beyond her job description, this 2013 woman-in-peril film from director Brad Anderson (best-known for “The Machinist” and the frankly wonky indie romcom “Next Stop, Wonderland”) and WWE Studios is quite entertaining, if rather unpleasant stuff. Some critics really went to town on this one, calling it sick and whatnot. They mustn’t like thrillers or horror films, because so far as women-in-peril thrillers go, this one is for the most part pretty tense and unsettling stuff.

 

The premise is such a cracker I’m surprised it hasn’t been used much before, if at all. There must be few worse jobs in the world than a 911 operator. You need to be alert with any kind of switchboard or reception gig, but with 911 it can be a life or death situation. That must be hell to deal with. It’s fast-faced paced, high concept B-movie stuff so that you barely even notice that the phone works, then doesn’t, then does, as dictated by the needs of the plot. I mean, the bad guy clearly must know the phone is there, why not take it away?

 

Michael Eklund is one of my favourite character actors going around (if you have a strong stomach, go and watch “The Divide” immediately), but in this film he’s less seedy and more deranged, which is a less interesting thing to watch. To be honest, the film isn’t much interested in him or Abigail Breslin, who has grown up to become ‘normal’ and boring. This is the Halle Berry Show, and that’s fine by me, because although she didn’t deserve her Oscar win for “Monster’s Ball” a decade or so ago, she’s perfectly cast in this and easy to warm to. Morris Chestnut is as boring as ever, and as for the WWE obligatory casting, Jennifer Hudson’s handbag David Otunga talks about his body within the first two minutes. He doesn’t get much screen time, but it’s more screen time than he’s had on WWE programming in the first 9 months of 2014, so there’s that I guess (Psst. He can’t wrestle. At all.) He’s perfectly OK, and at the very least, he fares better here than his otherwise much more talented (in the wrestling world that is) co-worker Wade Barrett did in his virtual walk-on in “Dead Man Down”.

 

Screenwriter Richard D’Ovidio (who hasn’t written a produced screenplay since 2001’s “Exit Wounds” and “Thir13en Ghosts”) puts himself in an unfortunate situation where what happens is probably necessary, but the ending just flat-out didn’t work for me. Whatever catharsis it is supposed to bring, it doesn’t, and the entire finale, inevitable or not simply isn’t as interesting or effective as the rest of the film. I’m also not as fond of unflattering and pretentious close-ups as director Anderson is, but that’s a minor complaint.

 

Chalk this one up as a near-miss, but it’s quite nifty at times and certainly not worthless, just ultimately less than it could’ve been.

 

Rating: C+