Phone Booth (2003, DVD)

"Nobody can resist a ringing phone," says the movie trailer for Phone Booth. Or something like that. Well, I can. Yes, I can walk by any ringing phone, even in my own house, and it doesn't bother me a single bit.

Maybe that was why it was hard for me to get into the mood and logic of this film. Yet the idea of an unsuspecting dude getting trapped in one of the last phone booths in Manhattan by a sadistic sniper intrigued me and my daughter, so we saw it during her spring break from school.

Why Use a Phone Booth if You Have a Cell Phone?

The narrator of this movie starts out explaining quite a lot about how many cell phones are used in Manhattan, you'd almost think it was a Verizon commercial.

And one reason for using a phone booth instead of a cell phone is if you don't want your wife scanning your cell phone bill and catching you making too many calls to a particular number -- and finds that it's another woman.

Stu Shepard -- Cute, Cocky, Fast Talkin' A Hole

Colin Farrell plays a showbiz promoter who is nice to people he needs to be nice to, and treats everyone else like slaves. He sweet talks or tricks press columnists into promoting his clients -- he knows every move in the book.

Then there's the sweet, lovely new girl in town named Pam (Katie Holmes) from Montana. Stu calls her from the PHONE BOOTH every day at about the same time. A development that a lonely, psycho sniper has noticed as he's watched people come and go from that particular phone booth.

Stu's slick looks and predictable movements have attracted the unseen sniper (played by the maniaical voice of Kieffer Sutherland), who has bugged the phone booth and has the ability to zoom in on every activity of anyone in the booth -- down to the phone numbers they dial.

How Does Stu Get Trapped in the Phone Booth?

Stu is making one of his daily calls to the object of his unrequited lust (Pam), and when he's about to leave, the phone rings. It's the sniper -- Stu FOOLISHLY allows himself to get into a personal conversation with the sniper. He has a chance to say, "Whatever you say, Crazy," hang up and leave -- like a normal person would do. But Stu stays and keeps listening as Crazy Sniper Guy tells Stu all about his own life.

After Sniper Guy has Stu convinced that he has tracked down both his wife, Kelly, and Pam, and that he can and will kill them just for fun, Stu sticks around for more punishment and verbal abuse from Crazy Sniper Guy.

Sure, other people want to use the phone -- especially a trio of entertaining street hookers who depend on that phone for their business arrangements. Their pimp eventually comes over to threaten Stu to get the hell out of the phone booth -- and Crazy Sniper Guy kills the pimp with a laser-beamed high calibre weapon.

We Seem to Have a Misunderstanding Here

Of course, everyone who sees the pimp get killed believes Stu did it from inside the phone booth.

That's where the holes in the logic and the plot start for me as a viewer. Stu gets shot, too -- he's got a big bloody, oozing mess from his ear to his shoulder.

Stu's obvious messy injury goes totally unnoticed by the friendly New York cop (Forest Whitaker) who shows up to try to communicate with Stu and coax him out of the phone booth. Stu tells the cop that he's talking to his shrink. If Stu tells the cop about the sniper, either Kelly or Pam (who have shown up on the scene after Crazy Sniper Man calls them) will be targeted.

Whitaker is a fine actor (for better evidence of that than this film, see him playing Charlie Parker in the Clint Eastwood flick Bird), but you wouldn't exactly see any real signs of his talent in this part - which was a disappointment to me since he was the only actor in this movie that I had ever really seen before.

It's the Little Things That Count

Without revealing the rest of this movie's plot, I'll tell you why I began to lose interest in it about halfway through.

Stu is obviously injured, and no one notices the gushing blood. And Stu seems healthy and energetic, despite the river of blood running down his neck. He's wounded, but he's too cool to care. Whitaker as the cop is close enough to the phone booth to see the injury, but maybe he just thinks Stu shot himself?

It takes the cops way, way too long to put two and two together. You HOPE that if you're the one trapped in the phone booth by Crazy Sniper Guy that the cops will figure it out a little sooner.

The action was well paced, considering that it all takes place on one city block. There are some darkly humorous moments and a lot of "Go ahead, Punk, Make My Day" kinds of lines that guys like my husband just love.

So if your husband or special guy has gone to see The Hours with you, and he gets to choose the next movie you see together, this isn't a bad one -- and it's only an hour and 20 minutes long.