The Call

This is a hard one.  I didn't hate "The Call," but I didn't necessarily like it.  I guess I'll get into what I didn't like and then I'll say something nice at the end.  That works for me.

 

1) WWE Productions?!  That's not exactly a good thing but it's even weirder when there are no wrestlers in it.  I would've preferred to see Triple H as the 911 call operator with PTSD.

 

2) The script is terrible.  Everyone in this movie sounds stupid.  Whenever a character opened their mouth, I worried for their safety.  I wouldn't trust these people with a phone let alone another person's life.

 

3) SPOILER ALERT? MAYBE? Look, I don't know if this is a spoiler because they telegraph it in the movie.  Plus the script is stupid and clichéd.  So, the movie starts with Halle Berry being the operator during a murder.  She basically helps the killer find the girl.  This gives her PTSD.  Months later, she takes over a random call and lo and behold it's another girl being attacked by the same killer!  The odds of that are so insanely small, that it hurts my head to think about it.  Why not just have her deal with a new situation and have her overcome her personal demons?  Are the filmmakers implying that she would not be personally invested in saving this girl's life if the assailant hadn't ruined her life?  That is far more disturbing and interesting than anything else in "The Call."

 

4)  The camera work is bad.  We alternate from extreme close ups that make no sense to what must be the work of an epileptic cameraman.  The close ups were the most frustrating.  Shaky, incomprehensible camerawork, while it sucks, has been around long enough to make me just groan in disgust.  The close up work is so bizarre that I have a hard time with it.  The first time I noticed it is when Abigail Breslin is describing her kidnapper.  Here's what happens:

Berry: What color is the car?

Breslin: Red.

Cut to extreme close up of side mirror which is red, I guess.  But why the side mirror as representative of the car?  Maybe that was just a weird choice.

Berry: What does he look like?  White, Black, Asian?

Breslin: White.

Cut to extreme close up of the back of kidnapper's head which is the back of a white dude's head.  But why the back of his head?  That makes sense if she described hair color.

Berry: How old is he?  30s, 40s?

Breslin: 30s, maybe.  Mid-30s.

Cut to extreme close up of kidnapper's knuckles which are the knuckles of a mid-30s white male.  Wait, what?!  His knuckles?

Breslin: And he has sunglasses.

Cut to extreme close up of kidnapper's sunglasses. 

No other close up will make sense for the rest of the movie.  There are lots of fast close ups of noses during the "action" scenes.  I don't know why.  We may never know.

 

5) ANOTHER SPOILER-ISH THING!! At the end, Halle Berry knows where the killer is.  So like a well-trained, professional 911 operator, she informs the police.  The police arrest the culprit and he is tried for his crimes.  Ha!  Psych!  She goes unarmed to the killer and murders him!  Which leads me to believe that we don't really need the police.  What we need are a few dedicated 911 operators to answer the phone and dole out justice.  I guess the cops could still give out traffic tickets and play charity basketball games against firefighters, but let's leave the crime fighting to the professionals.

 

That's the broad strokes of it.  I could nitpick a million things about "The Call," but that it true of most films.  Now, it should be said that I didn't hate or even dislike this movie.  I chuckled at its idiocy which can be fun.  It's run-of-the-mill which is fine for zoning out on the couch for a while.  It's not a bad movie, per se.  It just has so much bad stuff in it.  If the story sounds good to you, I say watch it.  It won't hurt.  You may even find yourself liking it.

 

5.5 out of 10