This won't come as much of a surprise to anyone, but cell phones have, for all intent purposes, replaced the once venerable pay phone. For decades, the latter served as the only real means for making calls outside someone's home or office. Sure, there were walky-talkies and CB radios, but their range was limited.
Aside from Joel Schumacher's 2002 film and various brief cameos in the various Superman offerings, however, phone booths and their pay phones don't exactly make for exciting or terribly interesting cinema. It's not that surprising then that cell phones now have their own movie, "Cellular," that they can call their own.
An action thriller, the film comes from the apparently phone fertile mind of Larry Cohen who also just so happened to have penned Schumacher's "Phone Booth." Rather than confining the film to that one particular spot, however, screenwriter Chris Morgan (making his debut) has run with Cohen's idea, appropriately keeping it mobile.
The result might not be an annoying as roaming charges or as frustrating as a dropped call. Then again, its range isn't terribly long and there are enough holes in its plot coverage that you probably won't be calling home to tell everyone to see it.
Director David R. Ellis ("Final Destination 2," "Homeward Bound II") doesn't waste much time in putting the pedal to the metal. After a minute or so of pending damsel in distress Kim Basinger ("The Door in the Floor," "8 Mile") seeing her young son off to school, a bunch of thugs break into her home, shoot the housekeeper dead and kidnap the mom/high school science teacher.
As in most such films, what they want from her is never verbalized and thus kept a secret from us. That's supposed to pique our interest. Yet, Basinger's incredibly wooden acting (especially her verbal performance on the phone) is so distracting that your curiosity will be sidetracked and you certainly won't particularly care about her well-being (although she does get roughed up rather severely at times by the villains).
When things suddenly switch to Chris Evans ("The Perfect Score," "Not Another Teen Movie") and his buddy ogling the bikini-clad, pretty young things on the Santa Monica pier, you know one will somehow get caught up in the kidnapping story. The filmmakers, though, seem to believe that first they must make us see that Evans' character needs a makeover. Accordingly, they introduce the plot element of him trying to get back together with his ex-girlfriend played by Jessica Biel ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Summer Catch").
That, of course, is shortchanged there (and surprisingly not brought up again until very late in the film) when he receives Basinger's frantic and decidedly random phone call -- the first of many incredulous and/or convenient points that constantly undermine what the film is trying to be.
And that's a hair-raising, white-knuckle, and race against time action thriller where cell phone limitations (battery life, signal strength, etc.) serve as the complications constantly plaguing the hero's quest. I can appreciate what the filmmakers are trying to do with the material, but they've thrown in and simply ignored so many plot holes and problems with logic and/or believability that one is constantly removed from the proceedings rather than sucked even deeper into them, as should be the case.
Maybe they assumed and/or hoped that the film's nearly wall-to-wall action would distract one from those other distractions. If our preview audience was any indicator, they seemed to have succeeded, so the ability to turn off the cognitive portions of one's brains and then let the primitive/visceral part take over is clearly in order.
While nothing terribly original, exciting or memorable, the film's various action bits are serviceable and I guess that's enough for a film like this. Evans makes for a decent action hero, although I doubt this will be his break-thru, turn me into an action star performance as was the case with the likes of Keanu Reeves in "Speed."
The less said about Basinger the better, but the villains aren't particularly remarkable either. Sure, Jason Statham ("The Italian Job," "The Transporter") as the head honcho delivers a more convincing performance than the Oscar winner, but his character isn't as complex as it should be, especially considering the surprise revelations that later surface.
Noah Emmerich ("Miracle," "Beyond Borders") appears in a supporting role, but it's really up to William H. Macy ("Seabiscuit," "The Cooler") to try to give the film some class. Playing a character that's somewhat thematically similar to Robert Duvall's in "Falling Down," Macy is the tired veteran who gets caught up in the kidnapping mess when he should be looking forward to a new life. With a nod toward comic relief, that involves him wanting to open a day spa with his wife.
While that material isn't especially funny, there are other bits of humor that actually work decently, thus giving the film that sort of action-comedy mix that many viewers seem to relish. Although the film isn't horrible, I just kept wishing that the filmmakers had put as much effort into fixing the gaping plot holes and credibility problems, as well as fleshing out the characters more, as they did in staging the action and jokes.
I wanted to like this film in that sort of rare, guilty pleasure fashion, but all of those nagging problems kept me from doing so. Certain to please some viewers while irritating others, "Cellular" is like early cell phone service. You can tell what the people on the other end are trying to say, but the call has too much static and dropped moments to make it worth recommending. The film rates as a 4 out of 10.
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