Dir: Joel Schumacher. Starring: Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forrest Whitaker, Katie Holmes.
I was on a run you know. Seven straight trips to the cinema and each and every time I'd emerged more than happy with what I'd just seen. But I had to go and spoil it all, oh yes. I had to give in to the hype and see a Hollywood film from a director with a less than impressive track record. You see, the notices had been too good to ignore it, the premise was an interesting and original one, and so I thought I’d take the risk. But don’t believe anything you may have read so far - Phone Booth is an absolutely diabolically fucking awful film.
It starts nicely enough, with Stu (Colin Farrell) wheeling and dealing on the streets of New York, lies spewing out of his mouth, as he teaches a young assistant, Adam how to spin, how to lie – how to be a pr agent basically. But then when he enters a phone booth to call young struggling actress Pam (Katie Holmes) with whom he's been regularly meeting with but has yet to consummate there relationship, and after ending the call too her, the phone rings, Farrell does what we'd all do and picks it up, and doesn't like what he hears at all. Soon somebody’s been shot, what seems like every single police man in the country is circulating around the phone booth, and one way or another, it doesn’t look like he'll be leaving the booth alive.
But then it all goes wrong. The dialogue is mostly poor, the tension dragged out for far too long, and the eventual denouement is horrifically weak. Throughout the film Stu's being urged to confess his sins, and you'd think after all that’s happened it would be something pretty dramatic, shocking, scintillating yeah? After all, the other victims had committed pretty serious crimes. But no. Despite all of the time and money the assassin has put in to learning all about Stu's life, it turns out all he's done is do his job (ie over hype c-list celebs and lie to various magazines) and consider cheating on his wife. Hardly the crime of the century is it? Farrell's impassioned confession is well acted, but considering the lack of weight, the lack of doing anything really wrong, you have to wonder why he ever became one of the sniper’s targets - there's thousands of people out there committing far more shocking sins, so why he's targeted just doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make any sense at all.
Phone Booth is just about barely watch-able, and all credit for this must go to Colin Farrell who turns in a charismatic performance, at first all confidence but gradually becoming more and more desperate as events proceed, and he's finally proved that all the hype that has surrounded him for so long is justified. Forest Whitaker's not too bad in a ridiculously underwritten role either, but everyone else has little to do other than look distressed or confused, and the female parts are largely pointless, other than in a dramatic context. Kiefer Sutherland provides the voice of the sniper, and is menacing at times, but gives in to melodrama too often, and he just doesn’t seem to be able to fake laughter convincingly here, which seems strange. The voice over is too clear, too sharp, but in that it sounds fake, it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film and thus detaches events from reality, as does Schuimacher’s over flashy direction and pointless use of split screens and other rather tacky gimmicks to liven up the film visually.
Still thinking of going to see this? Just don't. Whilst there's a few moments of tension which work well, they account for roughly 5% of the running time and the rest of it is just frustrating and annoying, and it's as dull as spending 80 minutes in a phone booth talking to a senile relative. Supposedly part satire it's just not funny at all, and as a thriller it's just not exciting at all. It's a claustrophobic film, yes, but only in the sense that you'll wonder how going to the cinema can become such a tedious and uncomfortable event, and is yet more evidence that Joel Schumacher should not be given the money to make another movie ever again.
Alex Finch.
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