PHONE BOOTH (2003)
Plot:
Red-hot superstar Colin Farrell ("Daredevil," "The Recruit") toplines the thriller PHONE BOOTH, from director Joel Schumacher. A phone call can change your life, but for one man it can also end it. Set entirely within and around the confines of a New York City phone booth, PHONE BOOTH follows Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell), a low-rent media consultant who is trapped after being told by a caller - a serial killer with a sniper rifle - that he'll be shot dead if he hangs up.
What
do you do when you hear a ringing public phone? You know it's a
wrong number, but instinct forces you to pick it up. A ringing phone
demands to be answered, but when Stu Shepard takes the call, he
finds himself hurtled into a tortuous game. Hang up, says the caller
(Kiefer Sutherland), and Stu's a dead man.
A sudden and shocking act of violence near the booth draws the attention of the police, who arrive backed with a small army of sharpshooters. They believe that Stu, not the unseen caller of whom they remain unaware, is the dangerous man with a gun.
The senior officer on the scene, Captain Ramey (Forest Whitaker), tries to talk Stu out of the booth. But unbeknownst to Ramey, his team, the media circus that has flocked to the site - and Stu's wife, Kelly, and his client /prospective girlfriend, Pamela - the caller has them all in his high-powered rifle sights.
As afternoon turns into evening, Stu, the embodiment of an unethical, self-serving existence, must now undertake a sudden and unexpected moral evolution. He is emotionally stripped naked by the caller. Stu's lies, half-truths, and obfuscation no longer matter. Instead, he must dig deep into his soul, find his strength and attempt to outwit the caller, taking the game to an even more dangerous level. -- © Fox
Cast/Crew:
Written by: Larry Cohen
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring:
Colin Farrell .... Stu Shepard
Kiefer Sutherland .... The Caller
Forest Whitaker .... Captain Ramey
Radha Mitchell .... Kelly Shepard
Katie Holmes .... Pamela McFadden
Notes:
The movie was originally set to be released on 15 November 2002. However, after the sniper attacks in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., 20th Century Fox decided to delay the release of the film.
Screenwriter Larry Cohen originally pitched the concept of a film that takes place entirely within a phone booth to Alfred Hitchock in the 1960s. Hitchcock liked the idea, but he and Cohen were unable to figure out a plot reason for keeping the film confined to a booth. Once the idea of a sniper came to Cohen in the late 1990s, he was able to write the script in under a month.
The phone booth is supposedly on the north side of West 53rd Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. The filming began there but it was already November 2000 and much too cold for the cast and crew. After one day, the shoot took over in a historic section of downtown LA on 5th Street. It looks like NY, save for the well-known Studio 54 and Ed Sullivan Theatre which are on the original location's block.
The toy robot vendor is speaking in Swahili.
Scenes were shot in order.
The scenes inside the phone booth took 10 days to shoot, the other 2 days of the 12 day schedule were used on exterior shots of the booth's surroundings.
The scene when Stu confesses everything was shot in the first take. Colin Farrell got applause from those present right after the scene was shot.
Reviews:
'Phone
Booth' keeps audience on the line
By ERIC HARRISON
Copyright 2003 Houston
Chronicle
Phone Booth, a nifty thriller about a sniper and his victim, was scheduled for release last year, but the studio yanked it when real-life snipers hit the news.
The movie opens today, and not a minute too soon. Telephone booths are sooo last century. Cell-phone-packing youths likely are scratching their heads at the title. By the time it reaches cable, even us fogies won't remember dropping coins into slots to make a call.
The movie has a bravura opening. After starting in outer space, the film swoops in on Manhattan and into the guts of a modern telecommunications system. A narrator tells us how, in times past, people talking to themselves on the street were considered crazy. Now they're fashionable. Tiny cell phones are a status symbol.
A wheeler-dealer press agent (Colin Farrell) finds himself stuck in a phone booth and caught in the cross hairs of a sniper's gun in Joel Schumacher's thriller Phone Booth.
Stu, the focus of our story, is a particularly status-conscious gent. A wheeler-dealer, he's first seen juggling two cell phones, a lackey tagging along behind him.
Stu is a jerk. Colin Farrell conveys this so well, I would've fired a shot at the screen had I been armed. You have to go back to Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) to find a sleazier press agent.
The movie calls our attention to a particular phone booth in Times Square. Tomorrow it will be taken down. Nobody uses it except hookers (who must be poor at business since they can't afford cell phones) and Stu.
Every day, at the same time, he enters the booth, takes off his wedding ring and calls a young actress (Katie Holmes) to arrange a rendezvous. And every day, she tells him no.
Today, however, the phone rings after Stu hangs up. Kiefer Sutherland, speaking with precise diction and effete malice -- he sounds a bit like Hannibal Lecter -- wants to teach Stu a lesson.
This is a slight story enlivened by good acting, crisp pacing and some graceful comic touches. (Particularly funny is one of the hookers who goes berserk when Stu won't give up the telephone.)
The sniper says he'll kill Stu if he hangs up. To show he's serious, he fires a few rounds. Police converge on the scene when a man is shot. Everyone thinks Stu did it.
The plot is preposterous when you think about it, but director Joel Schumacher is smart enough to keep things hopping. We don't have a lot of time to think about it.
The sniper wants Stu, a superficial liar, to examine his life and confront his faults. He can leave the phone booth a better man or on a stretcher.
Forest Whitaker plays the police captain who takes charge of the situation, a man with his own psychological flaws. It's amusing the way his second-in-command subtly steers him and keeps a lid on things. In a way, the captain is being tested here, too. This ordeal also is about his redemption.
Little touches are what makes the movie work. A window near the phone booth displays a sign: "Who do you think you are?" The sign can be read in any one of several ways.
It's nice the way the movie doesn't insist on its own interpretation. The only thing it insists on is that you enjoy it.
Grade: B+
Trailers:
- Windows Media Player [HIGH]
- Windows Media player [LOW]
DVD info:
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Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. This DVD will probably NOT be viewable in other countries. Read more about DVD formats.)
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Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby
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Rated: [R] Not for sale to persons under age 18.
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Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Home Video
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DVD Release Date: July 8, 2003
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DVD Features:
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Commentary by director Joel Schumacher
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Theatrical trailer(s)
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Full-screen and widescreen anamorphic formats
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- Details from Amazon.com
Read "Phone Booth DVD review at DVDanswers.com