Phone Booth Review
by Jerry Saravia (faust668 AT aol DOT com)May 5th, 2003
PHONE BOOTH (2003)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
May 4th, 2003
RATING: Two stars
WARNING: (this review contains one spoiler)
"Phone Booth" has a terrifically intense premise - a guy is stuck in the phone booth talking to a sniper who is ready to kill him if he leaves the booth. It is such a good premise - one not so dependent on plot than on action and behavior - that it is stunning how it never quite works. It misses by a hair.
Colin Farrell is Stu Shepard, one of those fast-talking, deceiving press publicists who lies to his clients about potential deals. He has a protege who is having a remarkably good ability of catching up with Stu. Of course, Stu talks to his clients on his cell phone. But on 53rd St. and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, he uses the only phone booth left standing in the block before it is to be torn down. Little does he know that he will be the last one to use it. He gets a call from a sniper, urging him to stay in the booth and talk to him or else the sniper will kill him. The sniper demands that Stu call his wife and tell her he's been thinking of having an affair with a sweet ingenue named Pamela (Katie Holmes). Stu had been calling Pamela in the booth every day instead of using the cell phone so that his wife wouldn't find out when looking at the bill (of course, Stu could use a post office box address for his cell phone bill, but never mind). Naturally the sniper has other demands beyond Stu's planned affair - mostly this is the omnipotent sniper who wants Stu to confess his sins to the world. The world would be the media since this whole event becomes a media circus after the sniper shoots a sex-club worker (unsurprisingly, the sniper is nearby watching him with his crosshairs). The police arrive, as does Stu's wife (Radha Mitchell), and a slew of media vans and reporters. Forest Whitaker plays a cop who tries to get Stu out of the phone booth. The tension builds until we realize there is not much of a threat of explosive violence as one would think.
Yes, the idea of a sniper pointed at a city block in New York is ripe for tension. The situation would have been more threatening had the sniper truly intended to hurt Stu or his wife or Pamela, both of whom arrive on the scene. All the sniper can do is laugh maniacally and tease Stu, even teasing to reach for a gun that is lodged inside the booth (certainly the killer with the cell phone in "Scream" truly meant to inflict harm). Stu sweats and talks a mile a minute, eager to get out of a haywire situation. But the sniper's intent is to get Stu to confess to the media world that he is a one-note publicist who lies to his clients and wears fake luxury watches and thinks of cheating on his wife. Hallelujah! As if we did not truly know these things already! Why would a sniper care enough about a lying, manipulative publicist who can get you free Britney Spears tickets? Why couldn't the character in the booth be a cop? Possibly Forest Whitaker? And why can't an exasperated publicist with his own life on the line think of a way of manipulating the sniper so he can actually get out of the phone booth? What if a truly chilling scene involving Stu's wife and Pamela really meant he had to make a decision on whose life he would have to spare?
Joel Schumacher, the flashy director of "Flatliners" and "St. Elmo's Fire," keeps his camera circling around the hero without ever examining his soul. You can also blame the thirty-year-old script by Larry Cohen (one that Hitchcock was rumored to direct), which lacks any real insight or purpose beyond the clever line, "If you are talking to a cell phone in the streets of New York, that determines status." This kind of thriller would have had a more kinetic punch in the 1970's, back in an era of truly "dangerous cinema," the kind of cinema where anything could happen because the director had the potential to do anything. In the 21st century, after the 9/11 tragedy, the recent D.C. sniper tragedies and the post-politically correct world of the 90's, a thriller where a character is forced to test his morality by the demands of a loony sniper no longer seems as viable to audiences as it once did. That is because audiences are not receptive to complex moral decisions anymore - they like the world to be a lot safer and kinder than it once was. "Phone Booth" is too safe and sanitized. It assumes that planning an affair and lying about it is cause for indignation and death. I never got the impression that Stu ever really sinned (outside of telling fibs, a publicist's job no doubt). He only has temptations. Only the Moral Majority would think that is enough cause for punishment.
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