Trapped in a Phone Booth: Tried-and-True Suspense Formula

There was Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number . Now there's Colin Farrell in Phone Booth . Amazing how much cuticle-gnawing suspense you can get out of one character and a telephone. Thanks to Joel Schumacher's taut, no-nonsense direction, and Mr. Farrell's sweaty, white-knuckle intensity, Phone Booth is harrowing proof that the old formula still works. Barbara Stanwyck was terrorized in a penthouse overlooking the Manhattan Bridge; Colin Farrell is driven to the cutting edge of insanity in broad daylight at the corner of 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue. Otherwise, nothing much has changed. At the movies, New York is still a place where 911 is a work in progress.

Phone Booth opens to the noisy, ringing arteries of the city's tangled phone lines, a winding intestine of buzzing wires that, if laid out end to end, would reach from Chelsea to China and back again. An endless collage of people keeps those phone lines crackling night and day, like hot spark plugs. Eight million talkers with 12 million cell phones, four million of them per day using pay phones, most of which are usually out of order and all of which are fast becoming an anachronism. At a busy corner on the periphery of the theater district, there is a pay phone that works. It's the makeshift office and seedy claustrophobic business center of a slick, sleazy, fast-talking press agent named Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell, in his best role to date). It is about to become the vortex of his moral universe. Stu will be the last man to use that phone booth. This is his story.

Not since Tony Curtis' Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success has there been such a visceral portrayal of a celebrity-chasing, bottom-feeding press agent on Broadway cruise control. Stu moves in and out of the rundown motels and pizza joints on the West Side with an appearance of superiority, but the flashy suit, imitation Rolex and take-it-or-leave-it attitude are pure fake. Stu's sweating desperation is matched only by his hustler's mentality; it's fascinating to watch him keep moving, one step ahead of the sheriff, like a floating crap game. In and out of a battery of phone booths, he forks over Britney Spears tickets to the NYPD in exchange for crime-beat information, which he feeds to Page Six at the New York Post , which pays him back by running phony but harmless column items on his clients.

Bartering his life for a line in a gossip column is the sum of Stu's existence, but on this particular day, as he approaches with a fistful of quarters, ready for action, the phone rings, and no publicity hound has ever left a ringing phone unanswered. On the other end of the line is an anonymous voice-cold, metallic, steady and uncompromisingly threatening-who knows enough about Stu's private life to demand retribution. Why doesn't he just hang up? Because the mysterious voice who makes him the pawn in an elaborate experiment in terror is aiming a telescopic rifle at his head from one of a thousand surrounding windows.

Trapped in the phone booth, this once-cocky manipulator finds himself begging for mercy, incriminated in a murder, the center of a massive police investigation, an object of media frenzy, and forced to bare his soul to the world at large. As the sinister prankster wrecks his life, and it becomes clear that tying up the line is the only thing that is keeping him alive, Stu is assaulted in the phone booth by angry hookers and their homicidal pimps, trigger-happy cops, sharpshooters on rooftops, and tourists with digital cameras.

Mr. Schumacher employs split screens to show multiple reactions from the surrounding area, but this is basically a one-man show, and Mr. Farrell gives it all he's got. A hunky hedonist who seems more interested in generating his own P.R. than learning his craft, the Irish rogue acts primarily by following his instincts. But in this film, he delivers an unexpectedly complex performance as the wannabe high-roller who thinks he's about 10 feet tall until his arrogance is suddenly diminished in a space about three feet square.

As a man who talks on the phone for 80 minutes without a toilet break, Mr. Farrell gives a clammy, manic, claustrophobic performance that is sometimes surprisingly heart-rending. Larry Cohen's script covers every angle and answers every question without one red herring, and Mr. Schumacher's fine cast also includes Forrest Whitaker as a sympathetic cop, Radha Mitchell as Stu's panic-stricken wife, and Katie Holmes as one of his aspiring clients, whose seduction has led to this downfall. There's also a sinister walk-on by Kiefer Sutherland that will turn your blood cold.

A first-tier thriller, Phone Booth will make you think twice before you ever enter a public phone facility again, but while it curls your hair, it makes you think. Actions always have consequences, and among millions of strangers, you never know who's watching.

Raging Bore

In the festering annals of tumescent comedy, Anger Management is as bloated and brainless as it gets. When an accomplished pro like Jack Nicholson teams up with an incompetent amateur like Adam Sandler, the stench of easy money and fast profits poisons the ozone. If this garbage contained even an iota of wit, it might pass for a parody of how to destroy a movie career. Unfortunately, director Peter Segal and writer David Dorfman-two names to erase from your Palm Pilot-are so slavishly devoted to filling a contrived plot with preposterous narrative twists that they never bother to give the audience much reason to care. Anger Management just creeps along like a broken moped looking for the handicapped parking.

The ludicrously overrated Adam Sandler, homely as a cow chip in a Texas barnyard, plays Dave Buznik, an easygoing Brooklyn nerd who designs clothes for overweight cats. After an innocent altercation with a flight attendant lands him in court, the judge sentences him to a year in jail or 30 days of anger management under the control of Dr. Buddy Rydell (Mr. Nicholson), a radical round-the-clock therapist. This is the entire plot of a dead-on-arrival movie that drags itself to the last dying gasp in one hour and 41 minutes.

While Mr. Sandler chokes, stammers and knocks himself unconscious trying to come up with more than two facial expressions, Mr. Nicholson-a hairy, smelly, overweight gross-out with enough flatulence for a kidney-bean commercial-steals the show bit by bit. Moving in with his patient to become the roommate from hell, Dr. Rydell sleeps naked in the same bed with Dave, subjects him to indignities in group sessions with genuine psychos, forces him to sing "I Feel Pretty" in the middle of a traffic jam on the Queensboro Bridge, accompanies him to work and eventually steals his girl (Marisa Tomei). To pad a nonexistent scenario further, there are guest cameos by Woody Harrelson-in long hair, earrings and a bra size that would make J. Lo envious-as a gay "she-male" hooker; John Turturro as a sexually dysfunctional patient who has impregnated his own aunt; John C. Reilly as Mr. Sandler's childhood bully, who grew up to become a Buddhist monk; and ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani as his own scene-stealing self.

Embarrassed and clueless, Mr. Nicholson is clearly slumming. As a goopy, doofus pet-clothes designer whose only talent is nostril-wiggling, Mr. Sandler comes closer to playing his real self. Under the labored circumstances, it's only a matter of time before his potential anger crisis turns into attempted murder. If you are still awake when Anger Management mercifully ends, you may think about committing a murder of your own.

Slam-Dunk Cabaret

Only a few days remain to catch two of the most enchanting musical acts to grace the New York cabaret stage in months. KT Sullivan, a larky performer so self-assured she doesn't need periods between initials, is sparking up the Algonquin's august Oak Room through April 12 with a rousing tribute to the great Harold Arlen. No bows, baby, just an eight-bar intro and bam!-she's on, polishing off a banquet of epicurean Arlen delights with plummy taste and boundless enthusiasm.

Accompanied by cabaret perennial Larry Woodard on piano, the buxom blonde from Oklahoma is a cross between Mae West and Lillian Russell, but she's done her homework. Exploring the world of Harold Arlen, she instructs as she entertains. Arlen, who would've been 98 this year, was influenced by Jewish cantorials, African-Americanbluesand Caribbean sambas with equal passion, and Ms. Sullivan examines each style with maximum skill.

Using a stage the size of a hubcap as her own personal Rand-McNally, Ms. Sullivan's moods range from the purple brushstrokes of Utrillo ("Paris Is a Lonely Town" ) to the yellow-brick ballast of Oz ("If I Only Had a Brain," "Over the Rainbow") to the tropical reds of Haiti on the songs Arlen and Truman Capote wrote for House of Flowers . Fusing two songs together until the stanzas weave in and out of each other simultaneously as counter-melodies is a dangerous conceit-one that can often backfire-but in this outing, it makes for an imaginative pairing of "One for My Baby" and "Blues in the Night" that stops the show. Add a slow, languid and more thoughtfully phrased than usual "Stormy Weather," a throbbing medley of songs from the underrated score of Bloomer Girl and a melting arrangement of "It's a New World," the Judy Garland ballad from A Star Is Born , and you get a vivid picture of why the songs in Harold Arlen's versatile career are worth hearing again and again-and why KT Sullivan is just the right girl to sing them.

At Feinstein's at the Regency, something very close to a miracle is the focus of attention and applause as three literate, sophisticated and musically accomplished talents share the stage through April 12. It's not necessarily true that songwriters interpret their own work better than anyone else. Harold Arlen was an exception, as the collectors' recordings of his voice clearly prove. So is Cy Coleman. Now, in this wonderful cabaret appearance, the songs by renowned composer Michel Legrand-with lyrics by the prolific husband-and-wife team of Alan and Marilyn Bergman-are being performed by Mr. Legrand, Mr. Bergman and the sensational jazz diva, Patti Austin.

Any one of the three could fill any room in America; to have them all on the same stage is a reason for rejoicing. Mr. Legrand turns "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" into a three-act play, playing grand chords on a grand piano and singing his little French-accented chops off, changing tempos and moods, scene by scene, with the great pianist-arranger Mike Renzi on a second grand piano, filling in the subtexts. Mr. Bergman negotiates the edgy curves and melodic detours of "The Windmills of Your Mind" with sincere and heartfelt purity. Neither composer is an accomplished vocal stylist, but they each know, feel and phrase their own songs with the kind of radar that can't be taught.

Then the fabulous Patti Austin takes over like a glamorous pugilist, gripping every song in a hammerlock hold, scratching her way into the heart of its lyrics and declaring a K.O. on every chorus. Blessed with the richest set of pipes since Sarah Vaughan, the sweetest harmonic bounce since Ella Fitzgerald and more polish and humor than girl singers half her age, Ms. Austin uses her awesome sense of irony and control to turn the brilliant "Ask Yourself Why" into a litany of badly needed freedoms of expression in an age of oppression and phony political correctness, then architecturally builds an arrangement of "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" from the ground floor until it soars skyward. Milking the rangy "You Must Believe in Spring" of its pathos and tenderness, she leaves you pleading for more.

Legrand, Bergman and Austin: For one hour of ecstasy, they turn a cabaret stage off a hotel lobby into the center spot at Carnegie Hall. This kind of perfection won't come around again. Only a fool would be dumb enough to miss it on this once-in-a-blue-moon occasion.