Review: Phone Booth

Colin Farrell plays a soulless Manhattan publicist cheating on his wife Radha Mitchell with an ingénue actress played by Katie Holmes. He lies to everyone, probably even himself, there isn’t an angle he doesn’t know or a situation he can’t talk his way out of. One day he answers a ringing phone in a public phone booth. The caller seems to know intimate details about Farrell’s private life, and claims that if he puts the phone down, he will be shot. He’s apparently a sniper watching from a building window somewhere in the vicinity. He even shoots a guy who pesters Farrell to get off the phone, which, aided by the biased ‘eye witness’ testimony given by a couple of skanky hookers Farrell brushed off, leads to the cops being called. Uh-oh, someone’s got some ‘splaining to do now. Farrell soon finds himself surrounded by a SWAT team who, as lead by police captain Forest Whitaker, believe Farrell to be a nutjob killer. Meanwhile, the caller won’t allow Farrell to reveal the truth, nor leave the confine of the phone booth, as he starts to give the slick press agent a moral dressing down. Oh, and both the wife and mistress make their way down to the scene. Where’s Jerry Springer when you need him? Richard T. Jones plays another cop, whilst Ben Foster has a cameo as a stupid white rapper.

Joel Schumacher (“The Lost Boys”, “Batman and Robin”, “Flatliners”, “Falling Down”) does a good imitation of Tony Scott (“Enemy of the State”) in this swift, economical thriller from 2002, one of his better films. The screenplay is by Larry Cohen (director of “It’s Alive”, “Black Caesar”, and “Q: The Winged Serpent”), who came up with the idea a long time ago (when cell phones didn’t exist) and pitched it to Alfred Hitchcock, who liked it, but didn’t see how the central character was going to be kept in the booth the whole time. Well, now Cohen has come up with the idea of a sniper, and the idea works entertainingly enough the first time around, even if Schumacher is no Hitchcock.

 

Unfortunately, subsequent viewings are less filling due to a lack of information about the character of the sniper, as Schumacher and Cohen pose more questions than they answer about him. I mean, surely this isn’t just a case of being a morality lesson? And if it is, what business is it of the sniper’s? Is he known to Farrell? Is he a jilted husband who knows what it’s like to be cheated on? Who the hell knows? And how is he able to avoid detection for so damn long?

 

Still, like I said, it works well-enough the first time. Farrell is pitch-perfect (in a performance he hasn’t bested since, outside of maybe “In Bruges”), Whitaker and especially Sutherland are well-chosen (apparently Sutherland was rehired after the film was already shot with Ron Eldard in the role and the scenes were re-shot. I’m glad because I can’t see Eldard working at all) in crucial roles, and as alluded to earlier, Schumacher shoots the film (no pun intended) in an exciting style that (due largely to the short running time of less than 90 minutes) thankfully never outstays its welcome. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique (“Requiem for a Dream”, Schumacher’s “Tigerland”) definitely does Schumacher a solid here, and I hope he was well paid for it.

 

It’s a schlocky high-concept film shot in less than two weeks, and Cohen’s screenplay is typically minimalist and gimmicky, but it’s really watchable in the moment. I’m no Schumacher fan, but I’m not sure Hitchcock would’ve made a film with such a quick pace as this. Farrell is truly impressive as the slick, but somewhat soulless PR/publicist schmuck.

 

Rating: B-