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 For
a movie that took only 11 days to shoot, Phone Booth sure
is rife with problems--developmentally, structurally and coincidentally.
Larry Cohen's screenplay was the talk of the town for years, attracting
the likes of box office behemoths Will Smith, Mel Gibson and Jim
Carrey. Even blockbuster director Michael Bay (Armageddon,
Pearl Harbor) was in talks to direct at some point, but when
Joel Schumacher finally took the reigns, the lead role went to
his Tigerland discovery Colin Farrell.
These days, you can't go anywhere without seeing Farrell's mug
plastered on the cover of some magazine, which is why the film's
original release date of last October seemed like such a sure
thing. Unfortunately, in a rare case of life imitating art, the
horrific events of last Fall's DC-area sniper shootings prompted
Fox to bump the film from its schedule, making it the second time
a Schumacher film was postponed (following the six-month delay
of Chris Rock's Bad Company after 9/11).
After all this time, the film is finally here, and I'm sorry
to say that it wasn't worth the wait. Contrived, melodramatic
and gimmicky to a fault, Phone Booth feels padded, loud
and overacted in an effort to hide its shortcomings, and not even
a notable performance from Farrell can save it from being the
cinematic equivalent of a wrong number.
Here's the 4-1-1: When slick, shallow publicist Stu Shephard
(Colin Farrell) decides to use New York's last working telephone
booth in order to make an untraceable call, he picks up the receiver
and is told by the sniper (Kiefer Sutherland) on the other end
that he will be shot if he hangs up. Trapped and confused over
the course of one crazy day, the man whose job it is to make people
the center of attention becomes the center of attention himself,
and Stu Shephard learns the hard way that he has a lot of growing
up to do.
There are many reasons why Phone Booth doesn't work, but
for starters, the main character--the very person who you're supposed
to root for--is a total jerk. Or is he? For at least a little
while, it feels like he's getting what he deserves, but when we
finally learn the real motive behind his captivity--because he
was thinking about cheating on his wife, as opposed to actually
doing it--one can't help but think, "That's it?" It's
an anticlimactic revelation to an already fabricated situation.
Joel Schumacher has had a slew of hits (A Time to Kill, Batman
Forever) and misses (Flawless, Batman & Robin)
over the years, but with Phone Booth, it's obvious that
he's in need of some (dare I say it) "directory assistance."
He tries to flesh out the film with some edgy split-screen techniques,
a grainy visual style, and a timely message about social disorder
(similar to 1993's Falling Down), but ultimately, this
contrived attempt to examine the public's fascination with fame
and the media feels underdeveloped and ineffective.
Though Colin Farrell became Hollywood's latest "it-boy"
after his powerful, understated performance in 2000's Tigerland,
he's been smart to build his impressive resume by co-starring
alongside A-listers like Bruce Willis (Hart's War), Ben
Affleck (Daredevil) and Tom Cruise (Minority Report).
In Phone Booth, Farrell finally goes solo and commandeers
every scene, but it still feels like he's trying to hide the weaknesses
of the material with a periodically over-the-top performance.
As for the supporting players, Kiefer Sutherland (whose relationship
with Schumacher dates back to the 80's with hits like The Lost
Boys and Flatliners) is more effective with his menacing
voice-over than the rest of the cast is on the screen. That includes
Forest Whitaker as the cliched cop who's trying to negotiate Farrell's
rescue and Katie Holmes as Farrell's potential conquest.
Try to imagine what Scream would have been like if Drew
Barrymore stayed on the phone with her killer throughout the entire
movie, and you get the idea of how Phone Booth plays out.
It takes too long to get to where it's going (even at a scant
80 minutes), and when it finally makes its point, it feels like
a long distance call that beats you over the head with the receiver.
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