Phone Booth a taut triumph

By Stephen Dowling BBC News Online entertainment staff

The film racks up the tension

The sniper thriller Phone Booth had to be pulled from US release schedules late last year after the shootings around Washington in September made it seem uncomfortably close to real-life events.

You have to hand it to Phone Booth. This is one thriller pared down almost to the bone.

Stuart Shepard (Colin Farrell at his scenery-chewing best) is a brash, arrogant PR executive who roams the streets of Manhattan in Italian suits, making and breaking deals with practised ease.

A mobile phone is constantly at his ear - except for when he stops at the same phone booth, the same time of day, to put some calls in to a young actress (Katie Holmes) he's trying to get into bed.

Shepard thinks he is being clever - his wife thinks he is up to something and is checking up on his mobile phone records.

But someone has been listening in to Shepard's illicit calls - a high-rise sniper who decides to teach him a lesson.

From the moment the phone rings, just as Farrell is about to continue his business, Schumacher really hits his stride.

Katie Holmes plays the object of Shepard's affection

A creepily calm voice (24's Kiefer Sutherland) tells the PR wunderkind that he has a rifle trained on him. If he hangs up, he dies.

Schumacher, whose last thriller was the woefully underwhelming 8mm with Nicolas Cage, cranks up the tension like a master.

The camera squirms and jitters alongside an increasingly fraught Shepard, never once giving us a breather from the claustrophobic nightmare our anti-hero is undergoing.

Sniper's games

In the build-up to the sniper's demonstration he is not kidding - after Shepard's run-in with some hookers and their bullying pimp - you are climbing the seat with sick anticipation.

But the sniper's game is not just to have Shepard fear for his life - he has to be humiliated as well.

Cue a tense stand-off with police (Forest Whitaker playing their firm but fair negotiator), and a skin-crawling admission to his wife (Radha Mitchell) that he has not been the dutiful husband.

Schumacher revisits the simmering tension of films such as Falling Down

Phone Booth is far from perfect. Its script creaks with some terrible lines. Whitaker's performance will hardly rank as one of his better roles.

And Kiefer's clear-as-a-bell voice plumps for omniscience when a crackling, static-riddled voice would have been much more frightening.

But Phone Booth sees Schumacher making up for some bad recent form with a tight, credible thriller, simmering with tension. At 81 minutes, it's perfectly paced, and revisits the tension of his 90s classic Falling Down.

And Colin Farrell proves that there's some real substance beneath all the styling.