Phone Booth (2003)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
A slick New York publicist who picks up a ringing receiver in a phone booth is told that if he hangs up, he'll be killed... and the little red light from a laser rifle sight is proof that the caller isn't kidding.
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Outfitted in designer threads and sporting a Bronx accent by way of Dublin, Farrell enters in full swagger as Stu Shepard, a public relations smoothie cut from the same sharkskin cloth as Tony Curtis in "Sweet Smell of Success."
Review of the movie Stars: Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Katie Holmes, Radha Mitchell Director: Joel Schumacher Rating: R for pervasive language and some violence Opens Friday nationwide Sporting more of that amazing facial stubble that achieves uniformity throughout filming, Farrell plays a married New York publicist who starts out as a Sweet Smell of Success-caliber heel.
Sporting more of that amazing facial stubble that achieves uniformity throughout filming, Farrell plays a married New York publicist who starts out as a Sweet Smell of Success-caliber heel.
Colin Farrell delivers a solid performance as Stuart Shepard, a sleazy publicist straight out of the classic noir Sweet Smell of Success.
The movie’s premise is said by screenwriter Larry Cohen (himself no slouch in the gripping-movie department, having directed It’s Alive! and God Told Me To) to be a project that Hitchcock had long desired to develop.
It's written by the king of exploitation films Larry Cohen ("God Told Me To"/"Q") and directed by the ham-fisted Joel Schumacher ("Batman Forever"/"Flatliners").
Phone Booth, a sort of Speed-meets-Twelve Angry Men, is kept basically within the confines of a single "room" and focuses on a life-or-death dynamic between two men, one of whom is a psychopath with a dangerous weapon.
You know the creative well has run dry when a cinematic high concept amounts to Speed in a phone booth.
Phone Booth takes the formula of Die Hard and Speed, in which the protagonist is trapped in a confined space by a wily psychopath with whom he communicates only by phone (or walkie-talkie), to its narrowest physical dimensions yet.
On one level, it's amazing that a movie about a man being trapped inside a phone booth could be successful, but Phone Booth works for many of the same reasons that Speed does - the script takes a seemingly dead-end premise and keeps throwing in new twists.
Watching Phone Booth, I was reminded of the John Huston World War II thriller Across the Pacific (1942), the ending of which hadn't been written when it came time to shoot it.
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But in "Phone Booth," he's as spiritually overwrought as Treat Williams in "Prince of the City."
It was Hitchcock, after all, who loved taking innocuous objects and locations and turning them sinister: the bread knife in "Blackmail," the country kitchen in "Torn Curtain" and, most notoriously, the shower in "Psycho.
Like in Steven Spielberg's Duel or John Dahl's Joy Ride, we are confronted with an implacable enemy.
Responsible for some of my favourite weirdo low-tech cult films (Q, God Told Me To, It's Alive!), underground auteur Larry Cohen's output is a lollapalooza of high-concept hokum invested equally in the Catholic and the apocalyptic.
It's written by the king of exploitation films Larry Cohen ("God Told Me To"/"Q") and directed by the ham-fisted Joel Schumacher ("Batman Forever"/"Flatliners").
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It was Hitchcock, after all, who loved taking innocuous objects and locations and turning them sinister: the bread knife in "Blackmail," the country kitchen in "Torn Curtain" and, most notoriously, the shower in "Psycho.
Just as Psycho gave showers a bad name forever, Phone Booth might have done the same for those claustrophobic glass boxes.
The story is the brainchild of writer Larry Cohen, hitherto known for B-movie and schlock horror flicks like "Maniac Cop" and "It's Alive."