Movie Review #10 - Phone booth
Dec. 20th, 2006 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catalyst2A movie with one location, only 2 lead actors, one of whom you barely see and a low budget - a recipe for disaster, usually, but this time it works wonderfully well.
First check of the watch - NEVER.
I liked this movie a lot - tense, well-paced and with a sweet twist at the very end. The story is simple - a sleazy publicist gets trapped in a phone booth by a sniper, who then proceeds to torment and crush him through psychological warfare. The normal Hollywood response would be to make this enormous and grand with SFX and CGI everywhere. Instead, this went the other route, relying on the ability of the two leads (Colin Farrell and Kiefer Sutherland) to carry the load. Not only do they do that but they positively shine, with Farrell's slippery glib responses eventually forced into self-revelation by the sheer malevolence and fury of Sutherland's sniper. Both are sufficiently talented though that they don't let any of that lapse into repetition - they are always varying and changing pace so my attention was always held.
The other thing that was good here was the direction - enough variety in shots and screens that it broke up any potential boredom but was underdone enough that it never became noticeable. I also liked that lack of colour - this was no glorious technicolor palette but a very grey muted vision, very suited to the rather dire tone of the movie.
And just when you think it is all over and done with - twist!
First check of the watch - NEVER.
I liked this movie a lot - tense, well-paced and with a sweet twist at the very end. The story is simple - a sleazy publicist gets trapped in a phone booth by a sniper, who then proceeds to torment and crush him through psychological warfare. The normal Hollywood response would be to make this enormous and grand with SFX and CGI everywhere. Instead, this went the other route, relying on the ability of the two leads (Colin Farrell and Kiefer Sutherland) to carry the load. Not only do they do that but they positively shine, with Farrell's slippery glib responses eventually forced into self-revelation by the sheer malevolence and fury of Sutherland's sniper. Both are sufficiently talented though that they don't let any of that lapse into repetition - they are always varying and changing pace so my attention was always held.
The other thing that was good here was the direction - enough variety in shots and screens that it broke up any potential boredom but was underdone enough that it never became noticeable. I also liked that lack of colour - this was no glorious technicolor palette but a very grey muted vision, very suited to the rather dire tone of the movie.
And just when you think it is all over and done with - twist!
