Phone Booth

You know the movie. It's the one with Colin Farrell, Forrest Whittaker, and Keifer Sutherland's voice.

Saw it last weekend on Star Movies, and most definitely did not like it.

I suppose I have to give it props for the plot and atmosphere. Those are top-notch, and would make for an excellent short story. It's just too bad that "Phone Booth" is a movie.

I wrestled with the opinion for about a half-hour after the film ended. Part of me was screaming that the movie was most certainly not a good movie, while the other part was asking me that, well, if you don't think it was a good movie, why did you bother watching it all the way up to the end?

I could answer the simplest part of that question, at least: I watched it till the end because I wanted to see what happened next. I watched it till the end because I wanted to see how the situation was going to be resolved. I watched it till the end because I wanted to take a look at a fantastic situation that could easily become reality under the most unexpected of circumstances.

Heck, I watched it because it had a good story. By definition, any plot idea that leaves the listener asking "so what happened next?" is bound to be a good plot idea.

I can imagine the pitch:

"Imagine that you're standing in the middle of New York on a normal day. The cars are passing by. The people are walking past you without a hint of attention. The hookers are languidly yawning against the entrance to their nearby strip joint.

"There's a public phone next to you. It rings.

"You're the person nearest to the phone. No one approaches it to answer. The phone keeps ringing.

"Finally curiosity gets the better of you, and you answer the phone.

"There's someone on the other line. He has a deep, raspy voice, almost seductive in quality. He says he knows you. He tells you a few things, not the least of which are fairly uncomfortable to hear.

"You tell him that you think it's all just some sick joke. Maybe somebody decided to play a trick on you. Maybe the guy just mistook you for someone else. Maybe there's a hidden camera somewhere.

"The man tells you your full name. And your wife's name. Your job. The address of your office. Your age, birthdate, height, weight and social security number. The name of the girl you're banging on the side, and the last time you snuck into a motel with her.

"He tells you that he has a gun, and that all he wants is for you to keep him company on the phone.

"And when you say that you don't believe him, you hear the casing of a telescopic rifle and the sound of a single gunshot."

...

Sounds good, right? It's clearly a "so what happens next?" plot.

Unfortunately, that's all there is to it.

Movies are, on average, one-and-a-half hours long. That's quite a bit of attention span that each movie has to coax out of its viewers, and that's why story is important. It keeps the viewers in their seats.

Story, unfortunately, has little bearing on whether or not the experience is enjoyable. That's what things like comedy routines, heavy drama, action sequences, and special effects are for. A good story will grab the ball and bring it downcourt for the beautiful assist, but it's ultimately the level of audience empathy that tries to make the winning shot.

Did I empathize with the movie? No.

The movie doesn't really go to great pains in order to flesh out its characters and settings. We don't see what kind of a person Colin Farrell's character normally is; We only see him as he plays out the events of the story. We don't know what kind of life he's leading, or why he's able to have an affair while claiming that he still loves his wife. We don't see why the voice at the other end of the phone is doing all this to torture him.

It feels as though the movie is supposed to scare its viewers - I mean, we could just as easily answer a mysterious phone call in the middle of the street to find a deep, raspy, almost seductive voice on the other end. And yet I never felt a twinge of fear from considering the possibility afterwards.

A movie with no allowance for empathy is much like a press conference without an open forum or audience participation - you certainly want to know what's going on, but you don't want to simply swallow what they tell you and leave it at that.

That's "Phone Booth" for me. It's got a nice plot and atmosphere, yes, but it turned out to be unsatisfying. I think that, like all movies, it was supposed to give a "that-was-a-cool-movie" reaction; It instead gave me a "that-was-ninety-minutes-of-my-life-wasted-watching-this-movie reaction".

Interestingly enough, I think it would make for a good short story. Short stories place much less emphasis on empathy, particularly because they're too short for the reader to form much of an emotional attachment with the characters. A story with a good plotline but little in the way of effects could still work, and in some cases might even work spectacularly.

But, alas, it isn't a short story. Too bad, everyone. It might have been real good.

Amazing how fate plays these things out.