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Phone Booth (Joel Schumacher) 2002
* * * 09-20-02 Jeremy Heilman
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Not nearly great, but much better than expected, Joel
Schumacher’s thriller Phone Booth
hews closely throughout to its high-concept premise and is the better for it.
Clocking in at just over 80 minutes, it has no time for silly subplots or much
unnecessary sentimentality, and its narrative leanness seems completely
refreshing in this age of action movie that pile on climax after climax,
ostensibly in an effort to give the audience more bang for their buck. After
roughly fifteen minutes of setup, the movie gets locked into its single, titular
locale, but never has a chance to grow boring after it does so. Colin Farrell
delivers a solid performance as Stuart Shepard, a sleazy publicist straight out
of the classic noir Sweet Smell of Success.
By the time he’s locked into the titular (and anachronistic) New York City
phone booth where a psycho’s devious game of cat and mouse plays out, the
movie’s deftly created a laundry list of enemies that could be his
smooth-voiced stalker (I was placing my bets on Robin Williams, given the year
he’s had). He’s almost always on screen, and it’s his undeniable charisma
(which has been almost absent since he last worked with Schumacher in the
stellar Tigerland) that carries the
movie.
Sure, Phone Booth has
a somewhat corny absolution scene at the end and a few of the visual gags (the
robot and the initial CGI zoom, for example) are a tad overdone, but mostly
Schumacher’s direction, which uses split screens well and has a garishly
exaggerated sense of city life, serves the script. His satiric digs, like the
appearance of an Eminem-style white rapper or a gag about an actress’s
audition material, flit on screen quickly, then move away before wearing out
their welcome. The movie’s pacing never flags (that would probably be more of
a feat with a film this sort than if it had), and the level of tension
noticeably escalates, he never overplays his hand. Most of the disappointments
in Phone Booth are minor ones. For
example, it’s disappointing that the antagonist turns out to be so
sanctimonious. The film’s attempts to make his menace extend beyond the
confines of the movie screen fail miserably, since nothing in Phone
Booth bear any resemblance to the real
world. Taken as a straightforward, populist popcorn movie, though, you could do
a lot worse than this. It’s a clean, effective thriller. Worth mentioning
also, is the film’s budget. Made for the bargain-basement level price of $1.5
million, digital effects and all, it shows economy doesn’t necessarily
preclude Hollywood-level action film thrills. I honestly would have guessed it
cost an amount about ten or twenty times higher.