Phone Booth

I wasn't planning on seeing Phone Booth as I felt that once the movie Sniper was made, there was little room for another film about a sniper. But a friend dropped by unexpectedly looking to go to a movie, and it was the only one neither of us had seen. My expectations were correct, and this film was pretty bad. What I didn't expect, however, was a yawnful performance from Kiefer Sutherland, the film's antagonist, who is never really shown in focus and who sounded like he was phoning it in. After seeing the movie I found out that Sutherland was brought in after the film was shot to replace another actor, which explains some of his disappointing work, but not all of it.

The premise of this movie seems to be this: Colin Farrell is a complete dick to everyone around him, and he gets his comeuppance one day after randomly answering a pay phone which is marked by a sniper. The sniper taunts him and forces him to own up to all the people he has treated like shit. That's the whole movie. If you are reading this, wondering to yourself how that movie could be stretched into 90 minutes, well, after a good 50 minutes in the theater I started thinking the same thing myself. While this film was no Gerry, it was definitely too long and would have been better as a 60 minute TV movie.

I have heard from several ladies and gay men that Colin Farrell is a hottie. It would seem that, since Farrell is pretty much the sole target of the cameras in this film, that if you have a Colin Farrell crush this movie would scratch that itch. Unfortunately, the man can't act, so if you are looking for an enjoyable performance, you won't get it here. This film was due to be released much earlier but was delayed because the studio felt it was too close to the DC sniper killings. Perhaps it needed to be delayed longer so they could make it good, or delayed straight to video.