A riveting tale of morality in a city noted for its sinful characters, “Phone Booth” is that rare edge-of-your-seat movie that is as cerebral as it is thrilling.
Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell, “The Recruit”) is a New York entertainment publicist. He has an office, but his real place of work is the streets of Manhattan, which move as fast as he talks. He has a wife, Kelly (Radha Mitchell, “High Art”), but he has taken a liking to one of his clients, a young actress named Pamela McFadden (Katie Holmes, “Dawson’s Creek”).
His wife checks his cell phone bills every month, so he makes a daily call to Pamela from a phone booth on the intersection of 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue.
This is the last true phone booth in New York, and just as it allows its occupants to isolate themselves and escape from the seediness of the city, it is about to allow Stu to isolate himself and offer him an escape from the seediness of his life.
While Stu is in the booth, the phone rings. He answers. A stalking sniper (Kiefer Sutherland, “24”) is on the other end and is furious with the protagonist’s sinful lifestyle.
Stu is told he will be killed if he hangs up the phone. Things get even messier when the caller proves his sniping abilities by shooting a pimp next to the booth. Some angry prostitutes insist that Stu must have unloaded the round and suddenly the publicist finds himself trapped in a phone booth, negotiating for his life with both his stalker and the police (Forest Whitaker confirms himself as a brilliant actor as he tackles the emotionally complex role of the police captain).
Director Joel Schumacher (“8MM”) has made his finest film so far with “Phone Booth.” At 81 minutes, the picture is a throwback to the days of classic cinema when plots weren’t diluted and casts weren’t oversized, but the films were still full of suspenseful scenes and well-developed characters.
Schumacher is greatly aided, however, by the cinematography of Matthew Libatique. It is rare for the camerawork of an urban film to be distinguishable, let alone noteworthy, but Libatique has developed his own very edgy style with “Requiem for a Dream,” “Pi” and “Phone Booth” as he manages to convey the chaos of New York City to the viewer through the intensity of his camera work.
The film raises tremendous morality questions. Is it acceptable for the caller to shoot someone to make his point? Is it any more acceptable if you consider that the person shot was a pimp armed with a baseball bat?
Does the viewer have a right to be upset with the prostitutes who lie to the police and complicate Stu’s situation if the viewer considers that Stu, too, is a liar? And how is the viewer to feel about the caller who assumes the almighty role of judge, jury and possible executioner just as Bartleby and Loki do in Kevin Smith’s “Dogma?”
If the phone booth was to be torn down the next day anyway, as the audience is told, audience members might presume that Stu’s flirtatious phone calls would have ceased; is it better to invite a nightmarish three-ring circus by addressing these secret calls or to just let them die the death they are scheduled to? And what does it say about the hypocrisy of our own society that the audience comes to regard the caller as an obsessive psychotic not for his sharp-shooting skills but rather for his stalking?
Remember that we are a society which has become obsessed with voyeurism through “The Real World,” “Survivor,” “Joe Millionaire” and so many other shows that tell us more about their participants than the caller knows about Stu.
Traditionally, quality films like “Phone Booth” are not released in April because it is deemed a dud month for cinema — too early for summer. But the film was intended to rival the Thanksgiving fare of 2002 until the Beltway Sniper duo hit and such a sharp-shooting film didn’t seem appropriate.
Now we’re at war, and some might argue that the film is still inappropriate. But then again, if we live in a world of cold-blooded snipers and ruthless dictators, 81 minutes of escapism lined with some wholesome values might be just what we need.
Grade: A/B
