Retrospective Film Review

Phone Booth (2002) • 20 Years Later

A man is trapped in a New York phone booth by a mysterious caller who seems to know his secrets…

Close to half a billion mobile phones were being sold every year at the time of Phone Booth ‘s production, posing the risk that a film entirely dependent on the existence of phone booths would seem weirdly outmoded before it even began. So, in the spirit of challenging implausibility head-on, Joel Schumacher’s film starts with a montage of cell phone users (and prominent Verizon logos) while a voiceover discusses payphones, claiming that at 53rd and 8th in Manhattan stood the last old-fashioned booth of its type, due to be replaced the next day by a modern and less private kiosk.

The movie makes it clear, too, that Stu (Colin Farrell), a small-time publicist and full-time sleazebag, is using a payphone rather than a mobile so calls to a young woman he plans to seduce don’t show up on the bill his wife might see, and that he uses the same phone booth for this purpose at the same time every day.