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Phone Booth
20th Century Fox Film Corporation
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for pervasive language and some violence
Starring
Colin Farrell,
Kiefer Sutherland,
Forest Whitaker,
Radha Mitchell,
Katie Holmes,
Paula Jai Parker,
Arian Waring Ash,
and
Tia Texada
Set entirely within and around the confines of a New York City phone booth, this film follows Stu Shepard (Farrell), a low-rent media consultant who is trapped after being told by a caller - a serial killer with a sniper rifle - that he'll be shot dead if he hangs up. (20th Century Fox)
| GENRE(S): |
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Larry Cohen
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Joel Schumacher
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: July 8, 2003
Video: July 8, 2003
Theatrical: April 4, 2003
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
81 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
80
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Phone Booth is 82 New York minutes long, all of them exciting.
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
A perverse kind of payback for every terrorizing cabbie, bullying streetwalker, insulting bike messenger and screaming corner grocer in Manhattan.
75
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.
75
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.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
The best pure thriller of 2003 to-date.
75
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.
75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
A tabloidy, nail-biting thriller.
75
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.
70
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.
67
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.
67
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
It's an energetic stunt of a movie, and it wants to make us sweat like it's 1974.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
D. Parvaz
Gripping in parts, tedious in others, the film works best when the action is brisk.
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Can't spoil the ending, except to say that it spoils itself.
63
USA Today
Mike Clark
Superficially gritty yet soullessly slick melodrama.
60
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.
60
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.
58
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.
50
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
The situation is suspenseful and unique enough to hold our attention for a time.
50
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.
50
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Proves that a movie can be true to life and still seem utterly preposterous.
50
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Best appreciated as hilarious pulp metaphor, which, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the screenwriter's specialties.
50
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.
50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Phone Booth may not be awful, but it's puny.
40
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.
40
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.
40
LA Weekly
Chuck Wilson
At only 84 minutes, Phone Booth's brevity turns out to be its only saving grace.
38
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.
30
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.
30
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
A movie that's laughable without, alas, even being enjoyably awful.
20
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Bogus on every level, right down to its half-hearted trick ending.
 The average user rating for this movie is 5.6 (out of 10) based on 59 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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