Review of Phone Booth

Introduction

I`m dabbling in screenwriting. I`ve had nothing optioned yet. The problem is that 98% of all screenplays submitted to Hollywood are passed-on (put in the bin). I trawl the net to find out the right way to format scripts and read plenty of self help books on the subject, but in the end it`s a lottery.

The best way to get a screenplay noticed is to come up with, what Hollywood call, a high concept idea. This is an idea for a movie that can be summed up in a single sentence or two and capture the attention of the prospective movie head honcho exec.

About 18 months ago I was checking out the current scripts that had been sold in Hollywood at www.donedeal.com. Here they usually give a working title, brief tag line, those one or two sentences, and how much it`s been optioned for. It was here I noticed an instant high concept script. It`s working title was "The Call" the tagline ran something like this...

"A man answers a ringing phone at a phone booth in downtown New York. He his then told by the caller that if he hangs up or leaves the phone booth he will be shot!"

You instantly want to know the rest of the story. The idea is compelling. Why does the caller want to kill this man? Who is the sniper? And how the hell do you make an hour-and-a-half movie only in a phone booth? This obviously became Phone Booth with Colin Farrell as our phone answering target. But the beauty of this movie is its simplicity. The above tagline is the basic story but then we delve deeper and begin to find out more about our protagonist, his faults, his loves, his lies.

Ok that`s enough of the screenwriting workshop! How does this look on the digital platter.

Video

The 2.35:1 anamorphic image isn`t bad. There`s some kind of false grain added to the print to give it a gritty feel but colours are natural throughout. Whites are bright with little or no edge enhancement that leads to the dreaded haloing. Blacks are strong and solid when required with a good range of grey levels. There was only a small amount of barely noticeable digital artefacting on areas of solid colour.

Audio

The 5.1 Dolbly Digital track is at its best in the opening moments of the film. There`s a good use of special effects panning that help grab your attention. The problem here is that the rest of the movie feels a bit sedate. The surrounds only kick-in for ambient use and it`s not until the end of the movie we get another sit-up and pay attention punch from the surrounds. The sound though is clean and clear all the way and when the bass does hit out it makes a good strong statement.

Features

Joel Shumacher`s commentary is a little bit bland but he has his off- beat moments where he can go off on some unexplained but amusing tangent.

The twenty eight minute, making of documentary is better than the usual press kit or HBO feature. It gives greater insight into the production and doesn`t come across a just a publicity piece of contrived fluff.

You also get the original theatrical trailer (yawn)

Conclusion

A gripping little thriller, and it is little as the running time is only one hour and seventeen minutes. It aslo grabs you from the outset with a smart well scripted opening. Schumacher shows us a different side to his usual directing style and Farrell pulls out all the stops. The disc is a neat and sweet item with some informative extras and a main feature that looks and sounds good but not great.