A ‘call’ you might want to take.
The H-Bomb: It’s a typical night for Los Angeles 911 operator Jordan Turner (Halle Berry), taking an array of calls ranging from domestic disputes, to medical emergencies, to the occasional crank, and handling them all with the kind of professional detachment that would be required of those who would have a job like this. Then she receives a call from a frightened teenage girl who reports a prowler breaking into her house. While waiting for the police to arrive (FYI, in this movie, they always arrive too late), Jordan gives the girl by-the-book instructions on where to hide and what to do, but when the line gets disconnected, Jordan makes a mistake, an astoundingly stupid mistake, that results in the girl’s kidnapping and eventual murder.
Six months later, a guilt-ridden Jordan, who is understandably traumatized by her collossal fuck up, now works as an instructor for the 911 operator training program. While taking a group of trainees on a tour of “The Hive” (the call center), Jordan listens in on a 911 call from a Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin), another teenager who has been abducted and is locked in the trunk of a moving car. Jordan immediately takes over the call from the inexperienced operator, and finds herself in a disturbingly familiar situation… trying to instruct another terrified girl on how to escape a kidnapping.
As if the two scenarios aren’t already similar enough, Jordan soon finds reason to believe that the man who took Casey is the same nut job who abducted and killed the girl from six months ago. As far as plot goes, I’ll stop there, because this is one movie where the less you know about it going in, the better off you’ll be.
The Call is a film that I was so not looking forward to. For one thing, ever since the new year, with a few exceptions aside, I had been seeing nothing but pure, unadulterated, cinematic dogshit. And this thriller, starring Halle Berry, who ever since winning the Oscar, has turned herself into the queen of crap movies, sure didn’t look like it was going to do diddly-dick to break that trend. Even though the words, “A Film by Brad Anderson” did give me a slight shimmer of hope (I didn’t know going in that he was the director), I was still expecting the following ninety minutes to be nothing but torturous.
I suppose I should have had a little more faith in director Anderson, because I was wrong. Dead wrong. Not only was The Call not ninety minutes of torture, it actually turned out to be a surprisingly intense and entertaining flick. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to end up on my top ten of 2013 list (at least I hope not), it’s not going to win any awards, but as far as taut, exciting thrillers go, it definitely gets the job done, as it had me on the edge of my seat for most of its running time, and even managed to surprise me once or twice with the various twists and turns that it took.
Now, this is far from my favorite Brad Anderson flick, as that honor still goes to Session 9, with The Machinist in a very close second. This, I would say, is the “most Hollywood” film he’s ever made, but he takes Richard D’Ovidio’s script and wrings every last ounce of tension from it that he can. And damn does it get tense at times. The sequences in which Casey tries to signal for help without her abductor noticing, and another involving a would-be savior, were honest-to-God nail biters that had the audience at my showing revved up and yelling at the screen– this is the sort of movie where that kind of audience behavior is not only not annoying, but actually enhances the experience.
The strong lead performances by Berry and Breslin, as well as Richard Eklund as the kidnapper (who turns out to be a real sick puppy), also add a lot to the film’s building tension. I’m typically not a fan of Berry’s, but she’s quite solid here, as a 911 operator who constantly breaks her own rules, like never getting emotionally involved with callers, and never making promises to the callers. Then there’s Breslin, who’s, frankly, pretty terrific as the frightened young victim. I bought her terror completely, particularly when Anderson put the camera right up into her face, which he does quite often.
Eklund does a fine job of conveying what a genuine wacko this kidnapper is, but as we find out, he’s a man leading a double life, and I would’ve liked to have seen more of the “normal” side of his persona. But still, he was good. I also liked how the script went into his motives for doing what he does. I obviously can’t get into specifics here, but instead of just saying he’s crazy and leaving it at that, Anderson shows us things from his life that shed light on his actions. I’ll just say, this guy does not pick his victims at random.
On the negative side of things, there’s the film’s last act. Basically, like with many thrillers of this ilk, all believability gets chucked right out the window during the final half-hour. We find out that the bad guy has an underground lair (I mean, really?!), then we’re supposed to believe that Jordan would leave the call center in order to search for Casey herself… sorry, but bullshit. And if that’s not enough, Jordan then just happens upon evidence that the cops missed that leads her right to the location of said underground lair… come on! There are more issues that I had with the film’s finale, but again, due to the no spoiler law on this site, I won’t go into them, but I think my point has been made. The movie becomes completely ludicrous in the last act, which is disappointing, since I was totally with it up to that point.
But, even though the filmmakers apparently said “fuck credibility” towards the end, the audience I saw it with seemed to lap it up, so maybe I’m just full of it. Maybe I’m just over-thinking it. Either way, it didn’t kill the film for me, as I can still say that, again, much to my own surprise, I had a lot of fun with The Call. Is it a modern classic? Hell no, not by a long shot. It is more or less just “another Hollywood thriller,” but it’s darker than most, smarter than most, and more suspenseful than most.
