Phone Booth (2003)

I love this movie so much

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This was a decent film, until Colin Farrell confesses to his wife. Colin Farrell did a fine job in the movie. I blame it on the screenwriters. After he confesses to his wife to his wife of his infidelity it was down hill. And to top it off we get Kiefer Sutherland saying if he doesn't behave he'll be back, or some such nonsense. Wow, so Kiefer Sutherland is the new equalizer. He will kill people so they behave morally. Then we get a scene zooming out into space, satellite, and then a phone call, another phone booth. Maybe waiting for a sequel.Here's a suggestion. Write something intelligent. Intelligent! I know there is intelligence out there. Write it. Then produce it into a film. Not some half baked nonsense.I give this 3 stars for Colin Farrell's performance. The writing failed. All the other actors here were crap. Forest Whitaker is crap. What the hell was that sub plot with Whitaker manhandling one of his men? Katie Holmes – crap. Radha Mitchell – crap. The whores and pimp were decent, at least they were entertaining. The way the pimp went down was good.

First, i want to say that the Score composed by Harry Gregson Williams is very good and original.The performances are great and natural, but this Flick has a lot of errors, there is way too much swearing, it is not necessary.The scenario with "the caller" and "Stu" is clever, but a lot of things ruined this movie, "Stu" arguing with women he didn't even know is extremely disturbing, we already see that he is a rude person by the way he spoke to the Pizza guy. It's understandable that the Screenplay needed to have someone killed, but they could have had "Stu" argue with another businessman and have "the caller" kill him instead of the prostitutes and pimp scenario, that would've been a much better circumstance.We see that "Stu" is unlikable, so why should we even care about him?! Simply because "the caller" is still in the wrong regardless of "Stu's" wrong ways, "the caller" is trying to do God's job and God doesn't even do that, God gives free will, so "the caller" has no right to hold "Stu" at gunpoint and force him to admit his wrong ways, "the caller" is committing a crime doing that, so he is actually worse than "Stu". The story is good, it is just the prostitutes/pimp, and over-the-top swearing that ruined the movie.

As the name suggests, the action in this film is mostly pared down to one New York street and - basically - to a single phone booth. This is not the way things start out, however, as quite a bit (indeed almost an indulgent amount) of time is first taken allowing us to get to know the ways of the main character: a smooth-talking, relatively small-time but highly ambitious fixer called Stu Shepard (as played by an on-fire Colin Farrell). Being SUPERBLY acted, and entirely plausible-looking, this is a light and surprisingly enjoyable intro-experience that gives little or no clue of what is to follow.But soon enough the film justifies its name as Shepard homes in on the booth and we get to the main story of this 2002 piece by Joel Schumacher. Even at that time, the film was able to acknowledge the rise of the mobile phone, which does also feature, but was clearly still less dominant and life-changing than in 2017. So does "Phone Booth" seem hopelessly dated now? Not a bit of it.If one upholds the quaint notion that acting, and the dialogue interaction between actors, matters in a film, well there is just-exquisite and telling interchange to be had here between Shepard - who finds that his power of conversation is all that now stands in the way of his own instant death and that of other innocents, and the hideously sadistic, but also mostly smooth-tongued "caller" (Kiefer Sutherland). While engaged in their captivating verbal sparring and duelling, the pair are relatively soon joined (as it were) by Captain Ramey of the NYPD (Forest Whitaker - great as often), whose presence makes it clear to all that this is not really the classic detective story, but much more about the psychological side of things. Is there anything Shepard can do to turn the tables? In a nutshell, the caller has a high-precision weapon and is - literally - "calling the shots", playing with Shepard (and to some extent also others) and getting Shepard right where he wants him, taking advantage of high-tech while not eschewing low-tech either. Subtly enough (though as a rather rare commodity in a film), Ramey soon cottons on that something is "off" with the whole situation and is determined that nobody else is going to die.As with several other works of this kind, one is entitled to ask if it is mere exploitation to "force" the cinemagoer to "live through" relatively - or even extremely - contrived situations that probably could not actually happen. The answer to that must relate to the artistic achievement that arises from the device/conceit, and hence revolves around the question: "Is this a good film or not".I would say it was actually a great or brilliant one (and I do this despite the fact that the scenario refers to previous cases of the kind, hence the Police ought to have made the connection sooner, and also ought to (would in real life) have deployed a directional microphone, in order to hear precisely what Shepard was saying to his interlocutor, and thus very quickly realise what kind of situation they were dealing with).Such fatal flaws ought to destroy a film's credibility altogether, yet their only impact on me is in fact to reduce the rating I give this film from a 10 to a 9.I guess that speaks for itself...

Directed by Joel SchumacherStarring Colin Farell, Kiefer Sutherland and Forrest WhitakerOverall: This is one of my favourite thrillers of all time and it is just an incredible movie which doesn't get the amount of attention it deserves.Good: 1. Colin Farell does a great job as Stu Shephard as does Forrest Whitaker as Captain Ramey.2. The true star of this movie, however, is Kiefer Sutherland as the mysterious caller who, even with very limited screen time, gave a chilling performance and was truly admirable to do so much with just one's voice.3. The actual story itself was fantastic and I loved every single second of it.4. The idea is simple: One man in a phonebooth being harassed by a sniper. So simple yet so genius and incredible simultaneously. It proves that a movie doesn't need to be 'Inception' levels of complex, to be great.5. Perfect ending which couldn't have been done any better.6. I like the cinematography. It's simple and focuses on the phonebooth. It doesn't overachieve which is perfect for the movie.7. The sheer isolation of the movie is very claustrophobic and is such a perfect choice which places you in the shoes of the lead character.8. I love how 'Who the villain is' is open to interpretation. Personally, I see the Sniper's targets to be the villains and him the good guy. Think about it, he kills a Paedophile, corrupt business man, pimp and then threatens a man cheating on his wife. The caller's not a saint and is still technically a criminal but he is closer to the good guy than Stu is.Bad:1. His wife and mistress felt more like plot points than characters and their acting was pretty poor also. 2. His protégé kind of just showed up and left whenever he was needed. This could have been tweaked.9/10