Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Cellular

This one's quite a goodie! Kim Basinger sends her son off to school one morning, and then is immediately kidnapped by The Transporter, and her kid's nanny is killed.

Not only that, but she's locked up in some sort of garret & the transporter comes back in threateningly & smashes up the phone.

Except, and pay attention, this bit is really important, Kimmy is a science teacher! And before you know it, she's got broken handsets & wires all over the place & she's making random phone calls to strangers' cellphones to tell them she's been kidnapped & would they mind staying on the line & taking their cellphones into the police to help her out. Please. Also... like any good science teacher, she knows where the main arteries are in the human body. This knowledge comes in handy too.

And so what you've got, is this Phonebooth type deal whereby this young guy wholly concerned with getting back with the very getting-backable Jessica Biel, who's just dumped him, cannot hang up on Kim, or she, her kid & her husband are toast.

Phew... still with me?

This isn't quite a park your brain outside & enjoy yourself type of flick. For one thing, most of what they do with the cellphones is within the realms of possibility - and pretty much everything that could happen does, the battery runs low, they experience cross lines & at one stage there is a car chase purely to get hold of someone else's (an arsehole lawyer in a porsche) phone to whom the signal has switched... and the fact that the phone can record video becomes important.... You name it really.

In addition to Kimmy & the Transporter, there's Chris Evans (who is he anyway? He was quite good in a goofy frat boy sort of way), and William H Macy (the initially sceptical cop whose been on the force for 27 years & has never drawn his gun from its holster, but you better bet that's gonna change pretty swiftly) on board for the ride.

Well worth a look. And do, please do, turn off your cellphone for the duration.

And Basinger's in her 50s? No way dude!