For a film confined almost entirely to one tiny location, Phone Booth has been the centre of a lot of off-screen action: changing lead man from Will Smith to Jim Carrey to Colin Farrell, with various directors attached, and finally postponed as a result of the Washington Sniper attacks--and all this before its release. Still, Larry Cohen's taut 80-minute script finally hits the screens and, as public utility-based thrillers go, it's pretty gripping stuff.

Colin Farrell plays slick and obnoxious PR man Stu Shepard who picks up a ringing payphone only to be informed by a mysterious sniper (Keifer Sutherland) that there's a gun pointed directly at him. What Stu initially believes to be a joke turns about to be a vendetta from the sniper who objects to married Stu's philandering ways, and it soon escalates into a prime-time TV siege.

Joel Schumacher's energetic direction--employing some snappy editing and nifty split-screen techniques--helps distract from an uneven and often predictable plot. It's easy for the audience to think of a dozen ways this siege could be averted, but by upping the tension stakes Schumacher still makes it fun to watch.

Colin Farrell gives a compelling central performance, which runs the emotional gamut from anger to fear to anguish and even carries off a cheesy absolution scene. Keifer Sutherland's husky baddie voiceover is not exactly the stuff of nightmares but, like the rest of the film, you could do a lot worse. As a pure popcorn thriller, Phone Booth hits all the right buttons. --Laura Bushell

This is perfect example of how to do an intelligent thriller - keep it simple. Find a simple plot device to hook your attention, and then let the characters drive the plot. In this case, it is literally one plot device, and one character - virtually everyone else is superfluous. There is a real beauty in this almost minimal simplicity.

The plot device is an absolute gem. Farrell is well cast as an arrogant, ambitious publicist, smart and hip, full of his own BS, a liar, who takes people for granted. In short, he is a deeply unlikeable person. He makes a phone call to a girl on a public payphone so his wife can't trace the number on his mobile. When he finishes the call, the phone rings, and he picks up. The voice on the end of the phone (Keifer Sutherland) tells him that he has a rifle trained on Farrell's head, and that if he doesn't answer his questions, he will be shot dead.

So what does the sniper want? He wants Farrell to admit what a fraud he is. We never see the sniper, hearing only the voice. We do not know why he is doing this or what his motives are. In the same way in the brilliant French thriller Hidden (Cache), we never find out who is watching the family and posting the tapes, it doesn't matter. The questions are probing, challenging, digging under the cockiness and BS of Farrell's character, making him confront and deal with his own failings. Farrell fights hard against this - gives as good as he gets, and yet because we don't like him we want him to be confronted, to be challenged. This is a confessional by phonebooth. We see Farrell for all his flaws, and we find out the reasoning behind those flaws.

In terms of its simplicity and sleight of hand in using a simple exciting premise to explore some of the darker realms of the human psyche, it's very reminiscent of Hitchcock. Whilst not as good as the peerless Rear Window or Vertigo, it is certainly up there. Rear Window is perhaps the better example, using a similarly minimalist set-up to ask some very interesting questions about voyeurism, our love of watching. In Phonebooth, Farrell reveals himself in all his snivelling, pathetic, human weakness, emotionally naked - and we feel sympathy for him, we want him to survive.

Other reviewers have commented on the limited location - but I found the limited language off-putting! Apart from the "F" word and a limited number of other obscenities, there was very little "script"! I thought the film had potential - certainly, once the opening scenes were out of the way the tension built up very rapidly. I don't know if that pace continued throughout because, after five minutes of the bad language, I gave up.

I noticed afterwards, that the "15" category was awarded, not by the British Board of Film Census, but by the Irish. I'm glad I don't live in Ireland!

Trapped in a phone booth by a sniper, Stu Shepard has the worst day of his life. This low budget thriller is set almost entirely on a single street but the great writing and direction leads to this being one of the most original and tense films that I have seen in ages. Colin Farrell gives a good performance starting out the typical arrogant agent and descending into total terror. Forest Whitaker gives his usual brilliant performance and Kiffer Sutherland is utterly convincing as the invisible sniper. Another good choice was the use of split-screening so that you can keep up with developments off the street while never leaving the main action. This film is thrilling and involving, leading to toughly enjoying viewing.

Forget your Lord of the Rings or Star Wars and Harry Potter this feature has got to be the best film for years. It proves that movies don't need a multi-million dollar budget to be a class product. This film was shot in just ten days and in a way it shows but that is the appeal of a real-time drama, there is almost a documentary 'shoot-it-as-it-happens' feel that gives the impression of continuation. Too many retakes can end up spoiling the flow of a scene and as the film is technically one long scene with cutaway pictures to other participants on the phone it makes sense to record it like this. I suspect that the film was shot in narrative order, allowing the actors to build upon the emotions that arise from the mounting stress of the situation rather than having to remember how they were feeling if it was shot out of order. In writing terms this is called the Fleming Sweep, so named after the James Bond creator, his theory was that he would write a Bond novel from beginning to end without looking back over what he had done and when he had finished only then would he revise and polish his story, the idea being that it creates a better flow than the usual stop-start approach and for me this film is very similar.

The acting is world class, that statement can be used too often but here it is true. Colin Farrell is wonderful and it needed a top-notch performance from Kiefer Sutherland as the Caller to match and even exceed Farrell. Sutherland steals the show and this was amazing considering that he only used his voice until the very end and actually upstaged Farrell, who himself was awesome. The director took the correct path in chosing Sutherland and resisted the obvious temptation to go for a darker voice ala Tom Baker, Patrick Stewart and James Earl Jones, I think a Vincent Price type of voice would have been a mistake as the true terror of the performance comes from the fact that it is an every day normal type of voice rather than the forced horror of a scarier vocal interpretation.

The film ends at exactly the right time on 77 minutes, a very short film, but one of the things that annoy me about most films is their need for padding, I have always subscribed to the theory that when a film naturally comes to an end then end it, if it can be told in 77 minutes then do so, I think that had Phone Booth been fleshed out by just five minutes it would not be the masterpiece that it is today.

There is however one little gripe that I have and that is that I would have prefered not to have seen the Caller at the end of the film and left it to the imagination, but when you cast an actor of Kiefer Sutherland's calibre I suppose that you do want him in there somewhere, this is just a minor irritation on my part that in no way spoils this fantastic psychological, manipulation thriller. And the making of... documentary is great too.

If so-called 'cheap' films are always as good as this then I will take them over the big money Hollywood blockbusters any day. This is proper film making with actors rather than computers and such like. Go on give it a try.

This is a decent film, and pretty original too. Colin Farrell really has his work cut out for him doing 90% of his acting in a phone booth. With able support from the always reliable Forrest Whitaker this is a triumph of movie making without the need for big explosions, gore or SFX. Tense and gripping from start to finish, and a decent length too. Good stuff.