Phone Booth Movie Review:


Colin Farrell answers the call to fame as he steps up to the plate in his second teaming with director Joel Schumacher.

Farrell plays Stu Sheperd, New York publicist who uses his wits and smooth talking to wheel deals by the crackle and tone of a cell-phone. Sheperd has been predictable for the past little while in that he always stops at the same phone booth, at the same time a day to make a call to his girlfriend, Pam (Katie Holmes). Why the “song-and-dance” routine? Why not use his cell phone? You see, Sheperd is also very married to Kelly (Radha Mitchell).

Like any other day, Stu steps into the phone booth and makes his call. He talks his sweet nothings and hangs up. As he exits the booth, the phone rings. As soon as he picks up the receiver, Stu’s life forever changes.

The amazing thing about Phone Booth is that the film showcases its use of dialogue more than a lot of films do today. The conversation between Farrell and the caller is electrifying. How the director is able to maintain the tension throughout is intense. There are some liberties taken to propel the script. How the caller knows so much about Stu is a little over the top. But the dialogue and almost real-time showcase of the events makes Phone Booth a thought-wrenching watch.

The problem with Phone Booth for me was the happenings that take the audience away from Farrell and his caller. I had a hard time with the people outside the booth. The hookers, the bouncer and the cops were all just clichés and that took away from the tension. I felt the film should have stuck with its primary focus.

Farrell is very effective as Sheperd and brings a lot of vulnerability to the sleaze-ball he shows in the film’s opening. Farrell is also very good at being rattled when the tension reaches its highest. You are pulled into the man and his predicament.

It is no wonder that Joel Schumacher wanted this to be Farrell’s second film after “Tigerland” because it truly showcases his charisma and on-screen appeal.

I have always liked Radha Mitchell and she does once more a wonderful job as Sheperd’s torn-apart wife. This actress has the ability to be beautiful, tormented, distressed and panicked all in one look. It’s hard to find a pretty face with so much depth.

Forest Whitaker and Katie Holmes also do good jobs but there is a booming echo that these actors have played similar characters before. Especially with Holmes when she was so good in “The Gift”. Some director needs to take a chance on her and let her do more characters opposite to the ones she has played oodles before.

Phone Booth will grab yeah and if you are smart you will let it.

(3.5 of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer.

Dean Kish

Phone Booth is the exact kind of movie you would expect to see made with a large budget and plenty of action. It’s the kind of script that often is taken in by a large studio and changed to be a piece of money making eye candy, completely void of any depth. While watching Phone Booth, one can see how that could have happened, but in this case it did not.

Phone Booth follows Stu Shepard, a fast talking press agent who uses everyone in his life to help himself in any way possible. For the first fifteen minutes we watch as he hustles his way through the streets to a pay phone. He is going to this phone booth, the last in Manhattan, to make his daily call to a young woman, Pam, whom he is obviously interested in having an affair with. Stu even goes so far as to remove his wedding ring before making the call, almost as if he needed to lie to himself in order to follow through with this level of deceit. Unfortunately, immediately following this phone call, the phone rings again. Perhaps out of curiosity, or in case it is Pam calling back, Stu picks up the phone. On the other end of the line is a man that threatens Stu, if he leaves the phone booth or hangs up, he will be shot. As proof that he is not joking, the caller assassinates a toy robot that is outside the booth. What then follows is a series of incidents and mind games, all of which revolve around Stu and this phone booth.

Stu Shepard is played by a remarkable new talent, Colin Farrell. Farrell got his big break in another low budget Joel Schumacher film, Tigerland. Since making that little seen gem, Farrell has proceeded to make a handful of films that have put him in the public’s eye, but haven’t quite used his talent properly. If ever there was a doubt to the fact that Farrell is a fabulous actor, Phone Booth should change that. Spending nearly the entire film in a phone booth talking to someone he cannot see, Farrell carries this film into being something much more than just a thriller.

Shot mostly on set in about 10 days, Phone Booth should be a simple film, focusing on the situation and characters. Unfortunately though, Schumacher doesn’t seem to have enough faith in the material, because he turns Phone Booth into a melting pot of camera tricks and fast cuts. This gives Phone Booth a music video feeling; almost as if the filmmakers had no faith in the audience having any attention span (many could argue that this is true of today’s typical moviegoer).

Overall, Phone Booth is an intelligent thriller, but not the kind of film that you would expect to see playing in a large theatre. It has a low budget feeling about it that many may not like, but is definitely worth seeing if only to admire the work of Farrell and Kiefer Sutherland, who supports the story a great deal with his raspy voice.

Ryan Izay

Joel Schumacher's new thriller Phone Booth has
finally been released to U.S. audiences this week.
After many casting and director fallouts, the film was
greenlit and shot in just ten days nearly two years
ago. The thriller was set to open during a more
profitable time last November, but the film's
comparison to the Washington, D.C. snipers last year
got it bumped to this spring.

The film itself is a stressful, tense thriller about
a cocky New York publicist named Stu Shepard
(Farrell). Stu goes to a phone booth on 53rd and 8th
everyday to call a young actress named Pamela
(Holmes), whom he is trying to sleep with. The reason
Stu calls from the booth is so his wife, Kelly
(Mitchell), won't see the number on his cell phone
bill. After unsuccessfully trying to get Pamela to
meet him for drinks, the phone rings. Shortly after
Stu picks up he realizes that it is a sniper on the
other end of the line, that has a rifle pointed at his
head. The crazed sniper's motive is to get the cocky
and heartless Stu to confess all of his sins to his
wife and to the rest of the world. Stu himself just
wants to get out of the booth alive, and tries to use
his fast mouth in doing so, but the sniper is too
smart. The psychopath has obviously done this before,
or he just has a ton of confidence in himself.
Eventually, the police and the two women in Stu's life
show up, the table is then set for the film's final
climax.

Schumacher does some impressive things with his work
in Phone Booth. As a director, his creative choices
either work really well, or come across as totally
lame. Though Stu is only out of the booth for about
ten minutes of the whole film, the audience is
introduced to the women in his life by Schumacher
using split screen and picture in picture choices
while Stu is on the phone with them. The only
important character that Stu is on the phone with and
that the audience doesn't see is the sniper. A voice
by Kiefer Sutherland is only heard and it is very
effective, it reminded me of that conspicuous phone
voice from Scream (1996). If the voice didn't have
had any effectiveness, than this film would not have
worked. Schumacher's choices and style keeps the film
energetic and thrilling, but he also lets a lot of the
tension reside on Sutherland's voice and more so on
Colin Farrell.

This was the film that was supposed to make Farrell
into a star. He signed on shortly after his
breakthrough role in Schumacher's little Vietnam film
Tigerland (2000). I have enjoy Farrell's work since
he first received notoriety, with his performance in
Phone Booth he really shows his stamina. This film
rides on his shoulders and it is belongs to him.
Sutherland replaced ER's Ron Eldard as the voice of
the sniper, in which he can play a great psychopath
anyway; this time he lets his creepy voice keep you on
the edge. Forest Whitaker arises as the police
captain trying to reason with Stu, along with Radha
Mitchell and Dawson Creek's Katie Holmes playing the
two women in Stu's life.

Larry Cohen wrote the film with the character of Stu
being in nearly every shot or scene. Though Phone
Booth is a thriller, it is also a character study
about one man's righteousness and morals. An
understandable explanation is presented in the script
as to why Stu is in the booth, since phone booths are
pretty much extinct nowadays. There are some
difficulties in the script with some of the
circumstantial moments of surprise as well as the
whole ending being sort of a letdown after all the
built up tension to that point.

The screenplay is the layout for the concept then
Schumacher and Farrell really take the film up a
notch. It is worth seeing just to see Farrell's
performance, but Phone Booth is also a pretty good
thriller. As for the surrounding conception around
the film being pushed back because of the D.C.
snipers, while honestly watching the film, you can't
help but think about those terrible incidents that
occurred last fall.

Report Card Grade: B-

04/06/03
By Joseph C. Tucker

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