Overall Rating
 Awesome: 37.43%
Worth A Look: 41.52%
Just Average: 3.51%
Pretty Crappy: 10.53%
Sucks: 7.02%
8 reviews, 123 user ratings
|
|
| Phone Booth |
by Brian McKay
"Can I reverse the charges?"
|
PHONE BOOTH is one of those Hollywood cookie-cutter thrillers that tries to look more clever than it really is by being built around a gimmick. "Let's see if we can keep people watching a guy trapped in a phone booth for two hours". I guess when the test audiences started walking out at a scant 82 minutes, Director Joel Schumaker opted to modify the running time accordingly.When sleazy publicist Stu Shepard habitually stops off at a pay phone to call his potential mistress Pam (Katie Holmes), He finds himself on the recieving end of a call from a psychotic sniper (Keifer Sutherland) who torments him with mind games, shoots a bystander, and threatens to kill Stu's wife (Radha Mitchell) and/or Pam - both of whom have conveniently shown up at the titular phone booth on their own, after news of Stu's predicament gets splashed all over the six o'clock news.
Now, maybe this premise could have worked if a)It had been directed by Hitchcock, or even someone like David Fincher b)the script hadn't sucked balls c)Joel Schumaker and Colin Farrell didn't make so many crappy movies (although I gotta give up props for Tigerland - that was a fucking good flick). As it stands, Phone Booth is about as exciting as the average T.V. movie, and the stilted writing certainly does nothing to allay that impression. Forest Whitaker gives his worst peformance since he whored himself out in Battlefield Earth, and Irishman Colin Farrell's bronx accent isn't any better than his wavery Texan was in Tigerland- only this time the character is neither strong nor likeable enough to make the veiwer overlook it. As for Holmes and Mitchell, they are as generically pretty as their characters are forgettable.
But the biggest problem is casting Keifer Sutherland in the role of the Sniper. Not because he's a bad actor - on the contrary, he's quite a damn good actor and his work on 24last season was superlative. Nor is it because his voice is wrong for the part. Keifer can project a creepy enough persona with that voice, and maybe could have even given the world a halfway decent Hannibal Lecter had Anthony Hopkins never been born.
No, the problem is, Keifer's voice is just too fucking familiar. We've heard it a million times. In movies, in 24 every week, on commercials even, for Christ's sake. The reason a film like last year's Joyride turned out so much better than it had any right to was because the makers of that particular film were smart enough to keep the killer a complete mystery. They used an unknown voice actor who was creepy as hell, and they never, EVER showed us what he looked like (well, they did briefly in the deleted alternate ending, but then wisely cut it out). The fact that his face was an unknown factor, and that he could look like anyone, was what made Joyride's stalker so damned creepy.
When you hear Keifer Sutherland's voice, do you get creeped out? No, you think "Hey, it's Jack Bauer!" Kiss the suspense goodbye. Not to mention that his character is, in his own words, "A walking cliche'" - the omniscient stalker/killer who is out to teach his victim a lesson.
Add to this uninspired bit of formula filmmaking a "surprise twist" ending that should surprise absolutely no one, and you have a thriller even more disappointing than another film of its ilk that came out around the same time - Identity. But at least that movie gave us a fairly solid first and second act before it jumped the tracks and smashed into the busload of schoolchildren. Phone Booth never even builds up enough interest to be a letdown at the end.What hurts the most is knowing that Schumaker and Farell are capable of doing so much better together. PHONE BOOTH isn't the worst film of the past year, but it certainly qualifies for the most unremarkable. If you want suspense in a phone booth, try sticking your hand up underneath the phone and seeing what sticks to it.
link directly to this review at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=7220&reviewer=258
originally posted: 09/12/03 01:32:01
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 SXSW Film Festival. For more in the 2003 South By Southwest Film Festival series, click here.
|
 |
USA
04-Apr-2003 (R)
DVD: 01-Feb-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
22-May-2003
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
