When Phone Booth begins, a voiceover tells filmviewers that a particular phone booth near Times Square (53rd & 8th) will be removed the following day, presumably outmoded in the modern age of cellphones. Indeed, we next observe publicist Stewart Shepard (played by Colin Farrell) talking on his cellphone with various clients as if he were some sort of big shot. If he were a big-time publicist, he would be in an office high above the street, so we soon conclude that he is just a smart ass and quickly lose sympathy for him. Then he goes into the phone booth to call a prospective female trick so that his wife cannot detect his extramarital adventure by later finding an odd telephone number on his monthly cellphone bill. Soon after the call, the pay phone rings. He answers, and a voice (played by Kiefer Sutherland) begins a long conversation that he cannot end, since the caller is a sniper who threatens to kill him if he does not listen to a tirade or disobeys his fiendish orders. Inevitably, someone else wants to use the phonebooth. That someone is a hooker; indeed, several hookers are irate that he is ruining their business. When the pimp comes out with a baseball bat to try to force Stew out of the booth, the sniper shoots, the pimp falls, and the prostitutes claim that Stew has shot the man dead with a gun. Police, a crowd of onlookers, and the media come onto the scene; the media, in turn, bring Stew's wife, girlfriend, and his gofer assistant. On the evidence of the hookers, some of the police are prepared to take out Stew, who is under orders from his psycho telephone interlocutor to stay in the booth. But the police officer in charge at the scene (played by Forest Whitaker), Captain Ramey, wisely surmises that the telephoner is a sniper lurking somewhere above the busy street while contradictorily authorizing multiple police snipers to train their gunsights on Stew. Meanwhile, the sniper admits to Stew that he has killed two celebrated corporate thieves. The sniper also has done his homework on sins of Stew, who asks why he could possibly be in the same league with such multimillionaire assholes. The sniper, who obviously picks a target close to where he lives, so that he can bug and observe the phonebooth, proceeds to demand that Stew confess his minor indiscretions to the assembled onlookers, but the unanswered question is his identity. Clues suggest that he is with the FBI, as he is able to bug the phone, prevent the police from listening in, he has all sorts of personal information about Stew, and he easily makes his way to the Fire Department rescue van without being stopped by police. Phone Booth, directed by Joel Schumacher, obviously promises to end in a pool of blood, but the climax is not what most filmviewers will expect. Filmviewers looking for a moral may conclude that the message is that everyone should be more honest, but they will also observe that technology in the early twenty-first century enhances the ability of the powerful to engage in deception, thus relegating the majority of the masses, who are deliberately deceived, to live in fantasy worlds. Released in the year when a President, a Prime Minister, and lapdog media proclaim the imminent threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in a far-off land, the Phone Booth paradigm has obvious relevance to the realm of politics, but alas the mighty rarely confess their sins. However, an even more sinister implication of the film is that renegade members of the FBI, with unbridled Patriot Act powers, can become the new terrorists. MH
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