Phone Booth

Despite its somewhat implausible setting...there are no phone booths in Manhattan...and an underdeveloped script, director Joel Schumacher's (8mm, Flatliners) latest at times manages to generate genuine suspense. It also maintains more interest than its thin, farfetched concept probably deserves. This brisk, under-ninety-minute thriller plays out like a cross between The Twilight Zone and something from today's headlines. Ironically 20th Century Fox withheld its release earlier this fall because of the real-life sniper attacks.

Manhattan, we're told, boasts more than 10 million phones and three million cell phones. Unfortunately for hotshot publicist Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell), he's about to pick the wrong one.

It begins as a typical day in the life for Stu as he makes his daily rounds, bribing cops with free tickets, swindling local restaurateurs with promises of fame, and placating flaky clients with double talk. Although he owns two cell phones, Stu pockets both every day, along with his wedding ring, when he steps into Manhattan's last phone booth. There, safe from prying ears and incriminating cellular bills, he calls Pam (Katie Holmes), a hopeful young actress and potential mistress whose career needs help from a publicist with all the right connections. The only connection of which she is unaware is Stu's suspicious wife, Kelly (Radha Mitchell).

Unknown to him, someone is watching, and he can't be bought off, bribed, or fooled by fast talk. He's also aiming a high-caliber rifle. The anonymous gunman, having already dispatched two other high-profile pretenders over the past couple of weeks, has made Stu his latest target. The deal is simple: hang up the phone, or try to leave the phone booth, and the little red dot on his chest becomes a bullet hole. And, just to show he's not kidding, the sniper takes out the disgruntled pimp hassling Stu about tying up the phone.

The police, the media, and a crowd of bystanders quickly descend upon the unfolding drama with Stu trapped at its center. Lying cannot save him now...the only way to escape, the shooter informs him, is to confess everything to his wife.

The police captain (Forest Whitaker) who is trying to talk him out of the booth wants a confession, too, because Stu is the prime suspect for the pimp's murder. The captain also wants to know who he keeps talking to, and why he won't hang up. Tell them, the sniper warns, and he'll be shot.

To make matters worse, both Kelly and Pam show up. And what better a time, the gunman decides, to force him to choose which one will die. Unless, that is, Stu comes clean and spills all of his secrets, and not just those concerning his infidelity.

Schumacher has taken what should have been a half-hour movie and successfully stretched it to feature length. What makes the film work isn't Larry Cohen's script, though. Despite several surprising twists it contains just as many holes, such as why the sniper targets Stu, whose crimes are petty compared with those of the previous victims, in the first place.

Farrell and Whitaker's intense performances, upon which much of the film depends, rescue this film from complete mediocrity. The former makes an otherwise unsympathetic character believable and fun to watch as he squirms in the killer's rifle sight, and Whitaker, who suspects more is going on than meets the eye, delivers his usual fine performance. 24's Kiefer Sutherland provides the sniper's creepy, disembodied voice, acting as a deadly conscience to Farrell's character.

In the hands of a less-capable director, Phone Booth could easily have tread the wrong side of the line between suspense and tedium. A few of its saving graces are Schumacher's well-placed touches of humor and the sublime, which keep the film from taking its surreal premise too seriously. That approach makes the director's exaggerated vision of New York City, complete with porn shops, trashy hookers, and tough-talking cops, somewhat forgivable and even workable under such pretense.

The script touches on several relevant themes for the communication age...the proliferation of cell phones, the conflict between progress and older technology, and the nature of deception in the digital age...but largely foregoes the morality-fable approach in favor of a bare-bones suspense yarn. Further character development would also have benefited the film and truly taken advantage of its talented cast.

Although not the strongest of Schumacher's films by any means, it's still worth the 80 minutes of your time.