Two names who aren't exactly my favourite names in the movie world: Colin Farrell and Joel Schumacher. The first because I often find him annoying, pretentious, arrogant, and so on. The second because I can never forgive him for "Batman & Robin".
So its fair to say I had my trepidations for this film in which Farrell is the lead and Schumacher is the director. Thankfully, I was wrong to have doubts. "Phone Booth" is a magnificent return to form for Schumacher - a suspenseful, surprising mini-labyrinth of a film, with perhaps even slight elements of Hitchcockian film making. The film is set mainly in the title phone booth and the street it is on, and once Farrell's character of Stu Shepherd gets to the aforementioned telephone we never really leave it again. For this to work properly there have to be two factors that help us to ignore the claustrophobic settings: dialogue and acting. The plot is well written, simple yet effective. All in all its mainly a two-hander between Farrell and his anonymous captive.
The latter is played with menacing vigour by Keifer Sutherland, who is never really seen throughout the majority of the film, and so has to pull of a a very convincing voice over gig. It is also a tour de force for Farrell, who takes his character from arrogant, pretentious, self-centred (hmmm...) to sympathetic, redemptive, decent. It's just a shame that there is not much of a role for the always excellent Forest Whitaker, though I'm kind of grateful that Katie Holmes has even less time.
Another complaint I would have is the length of the film. Okay, so its short, snappy and to the point, but you do feel a little short-changed towards the end. It's as if the plot ran out of money before you could finish the call. Still, for tense, enjoyable entertainment, you could do much worse than this.
7/10
So its fair to say I had my trepidations for this film in which Farrell is the lead and Schumacher is the director. Thankfully, I was wrong to have doubts. "Phone Booth" is a magnificent return to form for Schumacher - a suspenseful, surprising mini-labyrinth of a film, with perhaps even slight elements of Hitchcockian film making. The film is set mainly in the title phone booth and the street it is on, and once Farrell's character of Stu Shepherd gets to the aforementioned telephone we never really leave it again. For this to work properly there have to be two factors that help us to ignore the claustrophobic settings: dialogue and acting. The plot is well written, simple yet effective. All in all its mainly a two-hander between Farrell and his anonymous captive.
The latter is played with menacing vigour by Keifer Sutherland, who is never really seen throughout the majority of the film, and so has to pull of a a very convincing voice over gig. It is also a tour de force for Farrell, who takes his character from arrogant, pretentious, self-centred (hmmm...) to sympathetic, redemptive, decent. It's just a shame that there is not much of a role for the always excellent Forest Whitaker, though I'm kind of grateful that Katie Holmes has even less time.
Another complaint I would have is the length of the film. Okay, so its short, snappy and to the point, but you do feel a little short-changed towards the end. It's as if the plot ran out of money before you could finish the call. Still, for tense, enjoyable entertainment, you could do much worse than this.
7/10