Phone Booth: Take this call

An entire film taking place in one location, in one such tiny location as a phone booth, sounds more like utter boredom than a tense, superbly suspenseful thriller. Yet somehow, Phone Booth manages to wrack nerves through one single cord and one tiny connection, despite the fact that unlikely hero Stuart Shephard (Colin Farrell) never manages to leave his teensy-weensy booth. And man does that booth feel small after 80 minutes.

Strangely enough, Hollywood bad boy Farrell is the key to Phone Booth's success, much more so than the elitist-sounding villain over-dramatized by Kiefer Sutherland. In fact, Farrell's sweat is perhaps the true star, showcasing his extreme nervousness better than any facial expression or vocal inflection. But Farrell does manage to bring exactly the right mixture of slime-ball and victim to his role, turning out a realistic and moving performance.

Farrell's Stuart is a seedy, money-grubbing Public Relations executive—irritating and smug to the last. See, our poor hero/villain Stuart is just your average sleazebag trying to call his almost- girlfriend Pam (Katie Holmes) from a pay phone since his wife Kellie checks the cell phone bills. Stu's by no means the worst guy in the world. He's that double-parked Mercedes, that guy who never tips, that little bit of petty jerk existing in all of us.

But to an anonymous would-be world changer sniper (Sutherland), Stu represents precisely everything wrong with society today. He represents opportunism, deception— someone who has everything but always wants more. The Pam-Kellie situation epitomizes Stuart's greed and is the focal point of the sniper's attack on Stuart's character.

After Stuart phones Pam, he gets a call back, and, assuming it's her, picks up, of course. Isn't it instinct, at any rate, to pick up a ringing phone? There's mystery in the phone, there's potential, and here, there's danger. For the caller is the sniper, the sniper pins Farrell in phone position and uses his vantage point to force the sniveling Stuart into all sorts of uncomfortable positions.

This sniper is good. He's done his research and he knows just how to deconstruct the pompous Stuart from powerful advertising executive to sweaty, pleading, terribly frightened victim. He brings the cops and media to the scene via a pimp shooting everyone believes is Stuart's fault. And there's nothing Stu wants less than a slow, painful, very public humiliation.

But that's what he gets, and guess what? He deserves it. Unfortunately, director Shumaker couldn't resist making Stuart heroic at the end, couldn't resist portraying him as having some previously unmentioned inner strength. While Farrell gives an excellent delivery of the ending corny speech, it's just a bit too nice. It's a little too out of character. If the film's point is a social commentary on our own human inadequacies, well, the ending neutralizes that point by idolizing Farrell.

After all, nobody wants to watch a film that hits so close to home and then has the audacity, the nerve, to claim that mankind is doomed. Nobody wants to believe that the day can't be saved and that people don't, in the end, change for the better.

Still, ending excepted, Phone Booth remains an excellent film reaching an intensity and tension rarely achieved in today's generally generic action films.

Phone Booth (at area theaters) is rated R for profanity and violence.