NOW ACCEPTING NEW PATIENTS
BY LOIS WADSWORTH
Stuck inside a phone booth,
Stu (Colin Farrell) is threatened
by an enraged pimp (John Enos).
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TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX, 2003
A MIDDLE EAST
FILM FESTIVAL
PROMISES:
Saturday, April 19,
at noon, at the Bijou
FRONTIERS OF
DREAMS AND FEARS:
Ring! Ring!
Thursday, April 24, 7 pm,
Willamette Hall 100, U of O
Anybody there?
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Directed by Joel Schumacher.
Written by Larry Cohen. Produced by Gil Netter, David Zucker.
Executive producer, Ted Kurdyla. Cinematography, Matthew
Libatique. Production design, Andrew Laws. Film Editor, Mark
Stevens. Costumes, Daniel Orlandi. Music, Harry Gregson-
Williams. Starring Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland and Forest
Whitaker, with Radha Mitchell, Katie Holmes., Paula Jai Parker
and John Enos. 20th Century Fox, 2003. 81 minutes. R.
A
freaky, one-act sideshow takes
place in a mid-Manhattan phone
booth, surrounded by pimps,
prostitutes, passersby and police. Joel
Schumacher directs this quickie, shot in
fewer than 12 days with a scrimpy budget
and currently hot Irish actor Colin Farrell in
nearly every scene. But the story is the
brainchild of pulp writer Larry Cohen,
whose cheap horror flicks include Invasion
of Privacy (1996) and Misbegotten (1997),
for which the website Rotten Tomatoes fails
to find even foreign reviews.
The premise is so simple that if you’ve
seen the trailer (and who hasn’t?), you’ve
seen the movie. Stu Shepard (Farrell) is a
ruthless, inflated New York publicist, who
dresses in spendy Italian suits and shoots
the breeze with gossip columnists and pimp
rock stars. Stu conducts his business via cell
phone and his monkey business from the
phone booth. Same time, every day.
One afternoon he calls his side dish,
Pamela (Katie Holmes), but before he gets
out of the booth, the phone rings, and he
picks up. A man’s voice on the other end
(Kiefer Sutherland) flays him for being a
sorry sleaze who cheats on his wife, Kelly
(Radha Mitchell). He proposes that Stu tell
Kelly the whole truth about his relationship
with Pamela, because right now the caller’s
looking at Stu through the sights of his rifle.
So if Stu hangs up or leaves the phone
booth, he’s toast.
From this point on, a deadly cat-and-
mouse game ensues between these men,
both of whom come off as arrogant, know-
everything jerks. If that’s appealing, you’re
going to like this movie a lot. If it’s not,
you’re going to be bored out of your mind
in about another 10, 15 minutes. That’s
when the police arrive, and Captain Ramey
(Forest Whitaker) begins to reason with Stu
to come out with his hands up.
Now by himself Ramey might have
served as an adequate foil for the deadly
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competition going on within the closed-cir-
cuit phone talk, but instead he is hassled by
a loud-mouthed, know-it-all police inter-
rogator, a dude who galls this viewer more
than either Stu the asshole or the warped
caller. So now we have three out-of-control,
rival egos scrambling for dominance, and
none of them worth spending two minutes
with. Boring.
Part of my phonic dis-connect from the
ongoing melodrama is Sutherland’s voice.
Because I watch “24,” I kept hearing the au-
thoritative dulcet tones of intelligence agent
Jack Bauer of CTU, the Counter-Terrorist
Unit, and wondering why Jack would be
killing or threatening
to kill people for
moral ineptitude.
Granted, such ethical
lack is to be found at
self-important levels
of show biz, but why
target this pip-
squeak womanizer?
He’s whiney and pa-
thetic but not danger-
ous. Then I’d re-
member I wasn’t
watching TV; this
was a movie that I’d
paid $4.75 to watch.
Then I was pissed.
The movie has a few thrilling moments
when it seems that a pimp with a grudge
(John Enos) will actually break into the
phone booth with a baseball bat and dis-
patch Stu himself. Earlier Stu had blown off
an edgy prostitute (Paula Jai Parker), who
wanted the phone to call clients, and now
this flashy muscle-man has come to protect
her good name. The pimp gets his comeup-
pance when the sniper takes him out, but his
girls wail that Stu killed him. That’s the
situation when the police arrive, the
conundrum Stu and the captain must sort
out before Stu gets himself shot by the
NYPD.
The best thing about this movie is that it
only lasts 81 minutes. Other than that and
Forest Whitaker, I can’t think of a strong
reason to recommend it. Now playing at
Cinema World and Cinemark.
ew
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EUGENE WEEKLY APRIL 17, 2003 25