Thursday, April 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: On the line: Farrell takes a fatal call in Phone Booth

By Jeannette Catsoulis

With the kind of hysterical hyperbole that eventually makes all description meaningless, the press notes for Phone Booth waste no time informing us that the film's lead, Irish actor Colin Farrell (Minority Report), is a "red-hot superstar." Because a scant four years have passed since he was playing the milkman on a TV production of "David Copperfield," we must assume the journey from anonymity to superstardom to be somewhat shorter than it used to be.

In fairness, though, those four years have been busy ones for Farrell, who has crammed into them seven films and, if one believes the tabloids, innumerable one-night stands. (The man's romantic reputation has also reached superstar dimensions.) Specializing in militaristic drama (Tigerland, Hart's War, The Recruit), he has proven useful for coaxing women into movies we would normally disdain--though not even Farrell could persuade us Daredevil was worth the price of a ticket.

Phone Booth has been hovering patiently in the cinematic background for more than a year. Hoping for a lull in real-life random violence, its makers have been loath to unleash their creation on a terrorist-scarred public. The capture of the D.C. sniper duo opened a brief, politically correct window, and the movie jumped gratefully through; though after all the soul-searching and hand-wringing preceding its release the finished product is far less of a bloodbath than we might have expected.

Farrell plays Stu Shepard, a bottom-feeding Manhattan publicist and one of those annoying people whose cell phones could only be removed by surgical intervention. Striding and screaming through his day, Stu plays the PR game with frightening intensity and no moral compass--habits of mind that bleed into his private life as well. Ducking into a phone booth at 8th and 45th, removing his wedding ring, Stu makes daily calls to Pamela (Katie Holmes), a tender young client with whom he hopes to commit adultery. Then one day the phone rings and an unseen voice informs him that if he hangs up, he's dead.

As directed by Joel Schumacher, the ham-fisted mangler of Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997), Phone Booth is really a 40-minute short dragged out for twice that long; yet the movie whizzes along with surprising energy and focus. Schumacher pins his camera on Stu and the area immediately surrounding the booth, painting his hero into a corner that necessitates the use of distracting frame-in-frame shots whenever we need to see what's going on elsewhere. But Farrell makes the device work; sweating and frantic, he gives Stu's terror a believability far beyond the restrictions of Larry Cohen's spotty script.

Phone Booth also benefits from some clever casting, although both Holmes and Australian actress Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black), as Stu's wife, Kelly, make only the briefest appearances. Much more satisfying is Forest Whitaker, as the police captain trying to contain the situation and save Stu's life. Even when playing criminals, as in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) or David Fincher's Panic Room (2002), Whitaker's air of calm decency is uniquely his own, lending substance and singularity to the most generic of roles.

Flimsy and manipulative, Phone Booth is more fun than it deserves to be, particularly in its desire to highlight the vicissitudes of a profession that oils the entire Hollywood machine. "Stu's placed too much importance on things that have little value," says Farrell in the press notes, clearly oblivious to the irony. Things like celebrity and superstardom, perhaps?