Phone Booth

In the commentary accompanying his very good movie, director Joel Schumacher states that shooting Phone Booth on a ten-day schedule (or 12 day, the number varies) was the craziest thing he's done since shooting drugs. But let's not forget Batman & Robin, which you'd have to be pretty fuckin' nuts to make. Regardless, Phone Booth is a taut, tense, streamlined thriller featuring everybody's favourite Irish partying womaniser (Colin Farrell) in, yes, a phone booth, held hostage by a sniper with a god complex who wants Farrell's slimy publicist Stu Shepard to atone, or at least admit to, his sins: attempted adultery, lying and more lying (he's a publicist, after all). It works because of Farrell's outstanding performance (running a gamut of emotions, with little to interact with), an ever-heightening sense of tension by Schumacher and the maniacal but calculating voice of Kiefer Sutherland as the sniper on the other end of a call Stu really shouldn't have answered. While the concept has been tried and failed with Liberty Stands Still, Phone Booth takes nary a misstep and even with its hyper-modern look feels like a throwback movie, where instead of huge explosions, CGI everything and ensemble casts, a few key players and good acting carries the film. Unfortunately, Phone Booth's extras are basically just Schumacher's commentary, with a theatrical trailer. And said commentary, while neither particularly insightful nor in-depth, sees the director of The motherfuckin' Lost Boys paying a huge amount of respect to everyone associated with the difficult task of making the Booth on its truncated schedule, and the fact this insane scenario could happen to any average person, especially in these irrational times. However, he doesn't address the real life sniper rampage in the states that caused the shelving of his movie for months, which would have been worth hearing here. Extras: commentary; original trailer. (Fox)