Extra Ordinary Ideas

Virtue, Honesty and Cinema

Last Friday night I went to see Phone Booth, a redemption/thriller set almost entirely inside what is supposed to be last free-standing phone booth in Manhattan. The movie opens with protagonist Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell), a vain and cheesy small-time publicist who plays loose with the truth in the service of his clients and discounted restaurant meals.

After several amusing minutes of watching Stu do his thing, we find him in a phone booth picking up a mysterious incoming call. The psycho killer/caller (Keifer Sutherland) is out to make him confess his sins to himself, his loved ones and the world under pain of threatened death. The movie unfolds pretty much as you would imagine.

Phone Booth is not great art, but one thing about it hits home. This guy is really not that bad. He spends too much money on clothes, abuses the free labor of a worshipful intern, and fibs to sleazy editors about the doings of his clients. His biggest sin is an inappropriately flirtatious friendship with a young actress, whom he calls from the phone booth every day after removing his wedding ring.

The psycho killer’s previous victims include a serial child molester and a multibillion-dollar corporate thiefton. You find yourself nodding along when Stu yells “Why me?” plaintively into the phone. The man hasn’t even really cheated on his wife.

This movie has bite because Stu is only a little bit worse than most of us. Yet he is a bad person in myriad small ways that trivialize his relationships and compromise his happiness. Phone Booth makes the viewer all too aware of his or her own small transgressions. Or perhaps – momentarily – just aware enough.