Phone Booth
How does this sound for a bold project. Make an 80minute movie; set it in a very small location of one street corner with a Phone Booth. Have a small cast and base most of the film around two characters, one of whom you’ll only hear on the end of a p
Plot
When publicist Stu Shepard (Coling Farrell) makes his daily visit to a phone booth to call his mistress Pamela McFadden (Katie Holmes) his day takes an unexpected turn. The phone rings as he is leaving and when he answers it, Stu soon discovers he has become a target at the end of a snipers rifle. Stu now has a choice, he can confront and confess his earthly sins or he can die.
Review
How does this sound for a bold project. Make an 80minute movie; set it in a very small location of one street corner with a Phone Booth. Have a small cast and base most of the film around two characters, one of whom you’ll only hear on the end of a phone. Finally have a shooting schedule of just ten days. Sound like a potential disaster? Thankfully even though, Phone Booth meets all the above criteria it is anything but a disaster.
Director Joel Schumacher delivers a tight, gripping and exciting thriller with Phone Booth featuring a great performance from Colin Farrell. Given the short run time it’s no surprise that after a short character development the film launches straight into action and doesn’t really let up the tension until the closing credits. Kiefer Sutherland is perfect as the voice of the sniper; his voice adds just the right level of threatening determination to the character.
Phone Booth is just as much a voyage of self discovery as it is an action thriller. Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell) is a typical product of modern life and commercialism. A shallow, self-interested, lying, fast-talking and not particularly successful publicity agent, he is forced at gun point to look into his own soul face his own shortcomings and admit them to the world.
It’s great to see that a film these days can be totally absorbing without any reliance on CG effects. The filming style is very much influenced by the likes of “24” with regular split screens showing both ends of conversations or actions that are taking place simultaneously. It may sound a little gimmicky, but in the context of the film it actually works very well.
Video / Audio
The two sided disk comes with the Theatrical 2.35:1 widescreen version on one side and a 4:3 cropped version on the other. Quite why anyone would want to watch a version with half the image removed is beyond me, so this review will concentrate on the widescreen version. The style of the film is particularly dark, gritty and seedy and this has been brought across well to the DVD. I didn’t notice any sign of digital artefact's, or scratches etc although I thought I detected the odd bit of excessive edge enhancement.
The disk comes with a very effective Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Considering the film is so heavily dialogue based there’s still plenty of use of surround effects. The best part of the audio track though is undoubtedly the phone voice of Kiefer Sutherland. The sound just fills the roof and provides a real sinister edge to the whole film atmosphere.
Extras
This shouldn’t take too long as all we have here is a commentary track. Not that there’s anything wrong with the commentary itself, Director Schumacher delivers an interesting and light hearted commentary. There’s plenty of information on the problems with working to such a tight production schedule and a good insight into the character Stu Shephard. The only other extra here is a trailer for this film and one for “Garage Days”.
Overall
Joel Schumacher films tend to be a bit hit and miss with me. On the one hand we have the truly awful Batman Forever and 8MM, however on the other and we have the likes of Falling Down, Flatliners and now of course Phone Booth. I’ve watched it twice now (three if you count the commentary) and find it just as gripping the second time. The DVD release is very lacking in extras and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a re-release on the horizon somewhere. Audio and Video wise the disk doesn’t disappoint and overall, extras aside I have to recommend the disk.
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