Phone Booth - Joel Schumacher

Phone Booth – 2003

Starring Colin Farrell, ‘Phone Booth’ is a psychological thriller about a Manhattan Publicist with a rude and aggressive temperament and a guilty secret of lying to everyone he knows and cares about. Getting on with his everyday face-paced life, the phone booth starts ringing and he makes the worst call of his life. On the other end of the phone is a sniper with knowledge about the finite details of Stu’s life (Farrell).

The film starts with a narrator sharing facts about how many people use telephones and the unimaginably large population of the area. He says “there are an estimated 8 million people in the bureaus of New York”. This emphasises the situation Stu is in because it puts in context how unlikely it is that anyone will know who the sniper is, “there are hundreds of windows out there”.

The introduction to ‘Phone Booth’ is quick, with heavy use of tracking and added sound, which is upbeat music. The intro shows Stu’s true colours, as he openly lies to many people as he just passes them by. We soon realise he has been lying to his wife and his girlfriend about his infidelity to both of them, something he is later forced to confess to the gathering crowd.

To highlight emotion and give two sided conversations, the shot is often divided into grids or split into two parts which is interesting and unconventional.

We meet a key character within the first ten minutes, a pizza guy, also used as a red herring as we are led to believe he is the killer towards the end of the movie, when in fact he is just a random person who was victimised not only by Stu’s cruel words but also by the sniper who slits his throat. This leads the police into thinking it was him that was on the phone to Stu all the time.

The fast paced start takes a standstill as Stu answers the phone and hears the voice of the sniper for the first time. The music also stops and is replaced with eerie, tense music displaying the danger Stu is in. The sniper plays a mysterious character whose identity is not revealed until right at the end; he has a deep unnerving voice that frequently threatens Stu and his future. At the start of the conversation Stu is his usual self, aggressive and threatening. However, he soon realises his place and shrinks down to a defenceless man with deep regret, amusing the sniper greatly as Stu’s life falls apart.

Flashbacks are used at appropriate times, for example when Stu is asked to remember other people the Sniper has shot before, featuring on the news. The previously murdered men and Stu have all got something in common; they have done something wrong; however the quite wimpy reason for Stu’s hostage is as simple as his deception to the people around him. The sniper says “Stewart, you’re in this position because you’re not telling the truth”.

Ironically, the reason Stu is victimised, he is forced to continue when the sniper tells him to say hurtful things to his wife and the understanding policeman who are trying to help him get out of the situation he is trapped in. If he doesn’t, he is told they will be shot.

The sniper is inescapable; he has bugged the booth to find out all about Stu’s life since he has been making secret phone calls to his girlfriend behind his wife’s back. He has also rigged the booth with a gun, which he tricks Stu into touching leaving his fingerprints all over it, evidence for the shooting of a man the sniper killed, not Stu.

Many dramatic shot angles are used, such as looking down on the booth from the snipers point of view to enhance Stu’s defencelessness and show how small he is in the situation.

There is a twist to the tale right at the end, and it finishes off nicely with more facts from the narrator, who is in fact a key character in ‘phone booth’.

That’s why Thurston should watch it. :)