Cellular, the new thriller at Carmike Cinema, has a number of strong elements: a solid cast of B-list actors, including Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, and William H. Macy; an interesting premise; and simple but effective cinematography.
       Unfortunately, the film seems to experience an identity crisis, as if director David Ellis wasn’t quite sure what to do with his resources.
       Take the premise.  Kidnapped Jessica Martin (Basinger) makes a desperate connection to the cell phone of a stranger, Ryan (Evans).  He is her only link to the outside, her only hope of potential rescue.
       The tenuous nature of their connection opens up all kinds of possibilities: what if the cell phone moves into a low-service area? What if its battery is low? What if the signal becomes crossed with another phone?
       These possibilities can be mined for drama or for comedy, but the guy in charge had better know which is needed in a given situation. That’s just the problem here.
       For instance, in one scene, Ryan pulls up beside a car blasting loud music into the cell phone just as Jessica’s captor is interrogating her, and the sound threatens to give them away.  A stress-provoking moment, right?  But the scene also plays as a comic reversal of generational stereotypes.  Ryan is young, the driver of the car is old, and the audience laughs, incongruously breaking dramatic tension.
       This is a film where, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie. At one point, the audience responded to a scene (a frustrated Ryan fires a gun to get attention in a busy cell-phone store) even before it transpired on screen.  It’s not good to let the audience be that far ahead of the action, and this scene too was a confused mix of the comedic and the dramatic.
       Such flaws threaten to dissipate much of the dramatic energy set up by an adrenaline rush of a beginning, when several large men break in the back door, shoot the housekeeper, and haul Jessica screaming away.
       The early scenes of the movie set up a strong visual contrast between the very dark attic in which Jessica Martin is held captive and the brilliantly sunlit Santa Monica Pier, where we first encounter Ryan.  Other nice visual touches include a zoom from a long shot of the Martin’s house, through the peephole in the front door, to Jessica in the kitchen, and a later close-up of Jessica’s hands repairing the shattered phone she finds in the attic.  
       But this skillful film-making is offset by frequent descents into silliness (a loud-mouthed lawyer played by Rich Hoffman, a stunt-driving extravaganza creating multiple-car pile-ups) and such cheesy moments as this: Jessica (on the cell phone) says “I feel so helpless.  It’s my family.”  The camera shifts to Ryan, staring straight into the lens, a newfound steely determination in his eyes.
       The virtue of the thriller as genre is that it doesn’t have to be intelligent or consistent to be entertaining, and for all its flaws, Cellular will entertain. It moves quickly through crisis after crisis, and – unlike other recent offerings – remains resolutely in the familiar world of ordinary life.
       Finally, Cellular gives us a chance to see a star being born.  I am referring, of course, to the movie’s true hero: the cell phone.  Cellular works the possibilities of this ubiquitous technology as many ways as possible – not just as a communication link, but as a diversion, a betrayer of secrets, a recorder of video (lecherous and incriminating).  An amoral instrument for good and evil, the phone is more complex than any of the human characters.

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This page last updated on September 13, 2004.