Phone Booth

Starring: Colin Farrell, Forest Whitaker, Katie Holmes, Radha Mitchell, Kiefer Sutherland

Directed by: Joel Schumacher

RS: 2of 4 Stars

2003 Drama

In this just-good-enough minor hit from early '03, Colin Farrell plays an unctuous New York PR person pinned down in a phone booth by an unseen logorrheic sniper. The movie is pretty much all gimmick: If Farrell steps out of the phone booth, he'll die; if he can't keep the nutbag -- voiced with smooth B-movie authority by Kiefer Sutherland -- on the line, he'll die. But Farrell proves he's got the leading-man chops to carry a movie, and he manages to survive the queasy moralizing of the ending, dignity intact.

WILL DANA
(July 2, 2003)