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Most of Phone Booth
focuses on the main character inside a public phone booth in New York
City. Doesn’t particularly sound like a riveting, rollercoaster of a
movie, does it? Surprisingly, however, watching an 80-minute telephone
conversation does prove pretty chilling. In fact, it’s one of the more
original thrillers in quite a while: highly conceptual, original, and
completely unpredictable.
The movie opens as Stu Shepard (the now-ubiquitous Colin Farrell), an
arrogant, low-rent media consultant in his late twenties, strides down
Broadway as his unpaid assistant attempts to keep up. Stu ditches his
sidekick and approaches a public payphone on the corner of a busy street.
Although he owns a cell phone, Stu uses the payphone almost everyday to
make calls to a “friend.” On one fateful afternoon, however, Stu hears
the phone ringing, and he instinctively answers it. The caller’s first
words: “Isn’t it funny? You hear a phone ringing and it could be
anybody. But a ringing phone has to be answered, doesn’t it?”
The caller, Kiefer Sutherland (who is brilliant) explains that he’s a
serial killer with a sniper rifle aimed at Stu, and if he hangs up,
he’ll be shot dead. Stu is trapped in broad daylight on a crowded
street, surrounded by thousands of people. Even though Stu has lots of
company around the phone booth, they only manage to add to his problems.
At one point, several strippers demand to use to phone. When rejected,
they call their boss, a big, tough guy over to manually remove Stu from
the booth, but the sniper shoots the guy in the neck.
With all the people living in the Big Apple, why has the sniper picked Stu?
Actually Stu is really nothing more than a pretentious parody of typical
high-rise politics. The sniper, however seems to think that Stu's crimes
against his fellow man are somewhat more serious, and he sees himself as
judge, jury, and executioner of people whose sins go unnoticed. The bad
guy in the movie actually steals a lot of Farrells thunder. You can't help
siding with the man with a gun when he decides to expose this yuppies
soul!
At around 80 minutes, Phone Booth proves that movies do not have to
be multiple hours and several shaves long to be dramatic and involving.
With a rapid and quick fire atmosphere, director Joel Schumacher keeps the
audience on edge from the opening bell! His sharp, crisp, in-your-face
direction never allows for a dull moment. He keeps the focus on Stu, even
when he’s speaking to others on the phone, and rarely cuts away from
him. The editing technique is quite inventive, and the film introduces New
York City in a very creative way.
The movie relies heavily on Farrell, whom Schumacher hand-picked for the
role of Stu, shot over a 10-day span. Farrell is a talent, who has proven
his ability to play a variety of roles, and he's the right choice for Stu.
Here he is intense, convincing, and—most importantly for this
film—consistent.
In the end, however, not everything adds up, and what does isn’t as
satisfying as it should be. The finale isn’t as inevitable as you might
think, and a number of unanswered questions leave the audience
perplexed… but not in the way the movie intends. The ending is blurred
visually as well as it is logically.
I'll keep my whines to a minimum, though. I was captivated for most of the
movie, and the most frightening part of this movie was the idea that it
could really happen to someone. (The film was delayed several months when
the so-called Beltway Snipers were picking off people at random in D.C.)
The next time I hear a payphone ringing, er... I won't be picking it up!
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