 Director: Starring: Release: 4 Apr. 03
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Phone Booth  BY: DAVID PERRY The first good deed by the title character of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie is when she calls a sad, lonely middle-aged man on a Paris payphone so that he'll wander upon a box of odds and ends he had hidden when he was a child. This is a great gift to him, a reminder of all the happiness of the man's childhood summed up in a rusty box. Immediately, he remembers the finer parts of his own life, the things that he had failed to fulfill in his adulthood. The payphone gift is not quite the same in Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth, though the morality game is still there. Here, the character is meant to gain some understanding about his own existence, though his epiphany comes in 60 minutes when Amélie's benefactor comes in a tight 5 minutes (and is much more acceptable at that). The man in the phone booth this time around is Stu Shepard (Farrell), a slick and slimy publicity agent with crappy clients and an even crappier attitude. He moves about the sidewalks of New York, shouting into his cell phone in hopes of getting some deal that will help him move further up the business food chain (his supposed Bronx background -- evidently by way of Dublin -- is meant to show that his current deceitfulness has been part of his movement towards success in his field). Every day he stops for a moment to make a phone call in the last phone booth in the city. Since his wife (Mitchell) checks his cell phone bill -- evidently she recognizes his untrustworthiness -- he must use this payphone to call his young, pretty client Pamela (Holmes), who he desperately wants to have an affair with. That there is nothing tawdry involved in Stu's relationship with Pamela, the moral vindication unleashed on him by the metro sniper (Sutherland) seems rather insufficient. This is, after all, a killer who professes to having killed many of the most immoral of this earth; and yet he's done the research and the preparations to get the confession of a two-bit agent who pines but doesn't commit. That this was written by the pulp credentials of Larry Cohen makes Phone Booth's moral high ground seem undeserved. This is the type of filmmaker who relishes the camp potential of the human endeavor and digression, hushed by the whims of a director more content with the flashy design it accommodates. This is not to say that Schumacher hasn't the slightest idea how to work with the script (his real-time conceit, brought together in split screen courtesy of Darren Aronofsky's brilliant cinematographer Matthew Libatique, does wonders for the pacing of a taut 80-minute thriller), but that his ideals seem counter to what Cohen would have probably preferred. Without Schumacher, the film would certainly lack the backing of a major studio and would have never afforded the presence of male flavor of the moment Farrell but it would also have a certain pride in its own sleaziness. The film feels neutered, and, taking into account the demeanor of my cat, this doesn't feel too good. The premise is so strong and the acting is so well done that it almost becomes
acceptable in its own downward trajectory. When poor Forest Whitaker comes into the story
to play the compassionate but devoted police officer, the movie is already reaching for
the chance encounter with a guilt-induced declaration of remorse that it wants desperately
to ram down the audience's throats. Phone Booth could have been a biting look at our own
misgivings. Instead, it's just another pushy sermon for the masses. |
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| ©2003, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 4 April 2003 | ||
