Directed by:
Joel SchumacherScreenplay:
Larry CohenCinematography:
Matthew LibatiqueComposer:
Harry Gregson-WilliamsCast:
Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell, Katie Holmes, Paula Jai Parker, Tia Texada, John Enos III, Richard T. Jones, Keith Nobbs (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
A wannabe hotshot entertainment publicist who's more intent on posturing for his unpaid assistant than he is in actually working, Stu Shepherd (Colin Farrell) ducks into a phone booth to make his regular afternoon call to his girlfriend (Katie Holmes). Stu stops in the same phone booth at the same time every day to flirt with the young girl, who does not know that Stu is happily married with no intention of dating her seriously. When Stu says goodbye to his girl and sets down the receiver, he picks up a call from a threateningly sarcastic man with a deep voice. This man seems to have been tracking Stu's visits to this booth every day, and suddenly Stu knows that his secrets are no longer his own. Soon, the caller identifies himself as a sniper and begins shooting. Police are called in, and Stu must use his PR skills in a final test to get out of the booth, alive. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (11)
How much does each of us hide? How much do we pretend in front of others and what will we do when we are exposed? What if his threats are not empty and the secret he reveals won't be the end of it? How quickly are we able to reassess our highest priorities when it comes to life, not just for ourselves, but also for those closest to us? It was a perfectly delicious pizza, and you're certainly going to wish you had accepted it.... Colin Farrell's perfect performance and the brilliant voice acting of the sniper in a film, which at the time had absolutely no competition. Even many subsequent screenings cannot change the fact that Joel Schumacher and Larry Cohen had surpassed themselves forever.
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I’m grateful to Telecom/Télefonica O2 for getting rid of the telephone boxes from my neighborhood. I’m such a dummy that I also might pick up a forlorn call. Just that I’m in no way such a hot shot like Farrell. I’d be a darn piece of cake for “that guy". And for this movie is a piece of cake too because everything works as it should and practically all came out unprecedentedly well. Especially the atmosphere. Something that would be hard to find in a regular Prague phone booth.
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KIEFER RULES! The main star in this inventive thriller for me is not the great Colin Farrell, but the absolutely perfect voice performance of Keifer Shuterland. I wouldn’t want to see this film dubbed. And I also wonder how the video distributors will handle it when converting it to VHS format. Schumacher divides the screen into several windows in which we see the plot running simultaneously from different locations. It's nothing new, but I like this method often used in the 1960s.
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Even after watching this film twenty times, it's still an inventive, clever, and suspenseful thriller where Joel Schumacher, constrained by budget and shooting days, lets the entire weight of the plot be carried by the polished dialogue of the Farrell-Sutherland pair. For this, the biggest thanks go to Larry Cohen, who did have some mistakes and logical question marks in the script, but the witty social criticism together with the escalation of the plot reliably carries the film for the entire 70-minute runtime.
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Phone Booth remains effective even after years, even though the actual phone booth might seem like an outdated relic found only in museums nowadays. This is also a beautiful example of how times evolve. But it's somewhat irrelevant because even in another 13 years, this will still be a compelling and claustrophobic drama that will have the same positive effect on the viewer. Joel Schumacher has really done well here.
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