Phone Booth

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Phone Booth is 82 New York minutes long, all of them exciting.

Film Threat Clint Morris

It spends little time on exposition, instead quickly getting into the thrust of the movie. For a film like this, it’s advantageous, grabbing the audience almost immediately after the opening credits.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Provides a reminder of the power of unadorned drama and language -- whole torrents of eloquent words -- in the service of a nifty idea.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

What keeps Phone Booth going, despite its premise, is the acting and the writing, both of which are top-notch.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Short, suspenseful, funny, and profane, the film's a throwback to the neat little B-level thrillers the entertainment industry used to crank out by the dozen in the post- World War II era and the early days of TV.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Has undertones of serious commentary on American violence, thanks to the screenplay by Larry Cohen, who often uses horror-film plots to explore cracks and contradictions in society.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

A perverse kind of payback for every terrorizing cabbie, bullying streetwalker, insulting bike messenger and screaming corner grocer in Manhattan.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

A lean, mean tension machine, setting up its premise, executing it with smarts, throwing in enough twists to keep things interesting, and wrapping it up before anyone can get fatigued or reflective. It's on the money.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Farrell is a dynamo. And Kiefer Sutherland, whose sniper role is essentially a voice on the phone, matches Farrell subtle shift for subtle shift.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The best pure thriller of 2003 to-date.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is essentially a morality play, and it's not a surprise to learn that Larry Cohen, the writer, came up with the idea 20 years ago--when there were still phone booths and morality plays.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A tabloidy, nail-biting thriller.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The result is a movie that combines a seriousness of purpose with an impish delight in craft, in a way Hitchcock would have appreciated.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Gussied up with a host of filmmaking tricks in an attempt to keep things lively, this intensely acted little exercise just doesn't have enough going for it, with the exception of gradually growing interest in lead Colin Farrell.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

It's a movie perfectly designed for tossing back popcorn (the jumbo kind so you don't have to leave your seat during the show); not until later do you get the empty feeling that you've swallowed an entire bucket of popped air.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's an energetic stunt of a movie, and it wants to make us sweat like it's 1974.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer D. Parvaz

Gripping in parts, tedious in others, the film works best when the action is brisk.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Can't spoil the ending, except to say that it spoils itself.

USA Today Mike Clark

Superficially gritty yet soullessly slick melodrama.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The payoff doesn't quite equal the intensity of the spectacularly squirm-inducing premise, but Farrell takes his showboating star turn and runs with it.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The movie's so hung up (pardon) on its gimmick it never transcends it; might have been better had Kiefer called Moviefone.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Schumacher's depictions of street life are cartoonishly ludicrous and riddled with cliches -- a pair of garish hookers, for instance, can't be excused simply because one is played with engaging vigor by Paula Jai Parker.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

The situation is suspenseful and unique enough to hold our attention for a time.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Farrell, adding to the case for his impending stardom, locks into his role with the laser precision of the sniper's rifle scope.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Proves that a movie can be true to life and still seem utterly preposterous.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Best appreciated as hilarious pulp metaphor, which, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the screenwriter's specialties.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Loud and frantic and filled with all sorts of business, but it's also empty and inert, a creative exercise that would have played better as a 30-minute short.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Phone Booth may not be awful, but it's puny.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Without question, the whole thing's absurd -- this is, remember, about a guy stuck in a phone booth -- but for its first 40 minutes or so it's also mildly entertaining, fueled by the nuttiness of the setup and Schumacher's energy.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Schumacher choose to start the movie in outer space? The opening shot epitomizes everything wrong with Phone Booth: Given the chance to stage human drama on an intimate, suffocating scale, Schumacher begins in the endless expanse of the void, tricked out with gratuitous CGI effects.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

At only 84 minutes, Phone Booth's brevity turns out to be its only saving grace.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A high-concept hostage drama of absolutely no value to anyone -- except maybe Bell Atlantic, whose titular street-corner pay phone is on screen for almost every agonizing frame.

Slate David Edelstein

The premise is admittedly a killer--fun to think about, fun to see realized, not so fun to see screwed up in the last half-hour.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

A movie that's laughable without, alas, even being enjoyably awful.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Bogus on every level, right down to its half-hearted trick ending.