‘Phone Booth’ a slick, occasionally tense thriller

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In theaters

PHONE BOOTH, directed by Joel Schumacher, written by Larry Cohen, 81 minutes, rated R.

Thirty years ago, when people still used telephone booths, writer Larry Cohen had the idea for “Phone Booth,” which he ran by Alfred Hitchcock, who encouraged him to put something down on paper.

By the time Cohen finished the script, Hitchcock was dead and “Phone Booth,” a thriller in which a man is held hostage in a phone booth by a sniper in a neighboring building, began the longest of long distance calls to theaters.

Eventually, the script came to director Joel Schumacher, who hired actor Colin Farrell for the lead and shot the film in a blisteringly fast 10 days.

Now, after being shelved for six months due to sensitivities surrounding the Beltway Sniper incident, the film is finally ringing in theaters.

In the movie, Farrell is Stu Shepard, a self-involved, Manhattan-based media publicist hustling his third-rate clients to any gossip columnist who will listen.

Dressed in the sort of cheap, flashy fare that suggests Madame Butterfly and Vinnie Barbarino spawned a clothing line, Stu is one slick, shallow hood about to fall into one ugly bit of bad luck.

Indeed, when he answers the phone at the phone booth on 53rd and 8th – the one he uses daily to call Pam (Katie Holmes), an up-and-coming actress with whom he’d like to have an affair – he doesn’t find Pam on the other end but the voice of a sadistic stranger (Keifer Sutherland), a man eager to kill him for all his sins, not the least of which is Stu’s willingness to cheat on his wife, Kelly (Radha Mitchell).

Where is the sniper? In one of the many buildings surrounding Stu. Is he for real? One lethal shot in a pimp’s back not only proves he is, but also brings in the police.

As led by Capt. Ramey (Forest Whitaker), the police must sort out this mess while Stu, unable to move from the phone booth because it would mean certain death, fights to stay alive.

What unfolds is a slick, occasionally tense thriller about the potentially deadly ramifications of forgetting one’s manners and losing one’s morals. If that makes the movie sound dated or even precious, that’s because it is.

Still, at 81 minutes, it’s a brisk ride, a film whose best insight comes from its observation that, in spite of never being better connected to the outside world, we’ve also never been more disconnected from ourselves and our own lives.

Grade: B-

On video and DVD

SECRETARY, directed by Steven Shainberg, written by Erin Cressida Wilson, 104 minutes, rated R.

Steven Shainberg’s quirky sex comedy, “Secretary,” asks what better life for a masochist than the life of a secretary, a career that – depending on the sadist in charge – can offer a perfectly humiliating mix of degradation, domination and abuse.

The film is hardly for everyone, certainly not for those who find nothing amusing about a self-loathing, mentally unstable woman finding true love at the back of her boss’s hand.

Still, for those with a taste for satire and – more importantly – a dark sense of humor, “Secretary” turns out the lights and offers a twist on your typical 9-to-5 world: What if there were a secretary who enjoyed being verbally abused and mistreated, someone who craved the discipline of a slave-master relationship and actively sought the occasional slap across the backside to boost motivation?

That’s the situation in “Secretary,” a film that some circles might consider to be the feel-good movie of 2002.

In the film, Maggie Gyllenhaal is Lee Holloway, a repressed, self-destructive young woman just out of a mental hospital who finds work as a secretary at the law offices of E. Edward Grey (James Spader), a man whose name intentionally recalls cartoonist Edward Gorey as both share a worldview that is, to say the least, offbeat.

Initially, Lee’s relationship with Edward is pedestrian – she does as she’s told, fetching cups of coffee, taking her share of memos, making her share of mistakes.

If it’s those mistakes that incite Edward’s wrath, then it’s Lee’s eagerness to correct them – and please Edward – that ignites his curiosity.

Indeed, as the film unfolds and it occurs to Edward that Miss Holloway, as he calls her, might actually be sexually turned on by his criticisms of her and her work, the dynamic between them shifts as their sadomasochistic tendencies are flung free.

Somehow, none of this comes off as misogyny, particularly since it is Lee who is the aggressor here, not Edward, in spite of the fact that it’s she who’s being bent over a table and spanked into submission.

That all of this is played for comedy – with a few moments of drama tossed in for good measure – made “Secretary” one of 2002’s more unusual films.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.