toledoblade.com --

Cellular tells the story of a science teacher (Kim Basinger) kidnapped by men with shaved heads and held in an attic where she learns to construct a crude telegraph machine of sorts from the demolished remains of an old rotary telephone.

That last part they didn't tell you about in the trailer, did they? Probably because you'd never believe it. Basinger, left alone (and never tied up) by her captors, slowly lifts the shattered phone in her hands as if it she had discovered fire. A scene later, she's hunched over the wires, tapping furiously.

She shoots. She scores.

Dial tone.

"I have been tapping wires together until I reached someone," she gasps breathlessly, trying to convince the first person she connects with that she's in danger. Unfortunately, that person is Ryan (Chris Evans), a guy so irresponsible he can't be trusted to help his environmentally conscious girlfriend pick up the T-shirts she needs for the big whale-saving festival.

Helpfully though, Ryan resides in Los Angeles, as does Jennifer Martin (Basinger), and unlike everyone else with a cell in this movie, Ryan is not a lawyer, a cell-phone salesperson, or a big jerk.

Once everyone's connected, Cellular flips back and forth between Jennifer providing the instructions for her rescue and cowering from her tormentors, while Ryan races around waiting for their call to disconnect.

Cellular

Directed by David R. Ellis. Screenplay by Chris Morgan. A New Line Cinema release, opening today at Franklin Park Cinemas and Showcase Maumee, and rated PG-13 for violence, terror situations, language, and some sexual references. Running time: 110 minutes.

Critic’s rating: **

Jessica Martin - Kim Basinger
Ryan - Chris Evans
Chad - Eric Christian Olsen

As Ryan listens to Jennifer begging for her life, his phone is dying. He holds up a cell phone store to get a charger. He carjacks a lawyer, but it's OK because the guy's a jerk.

There is also a homicide, a bank shoot-out, multiple car chases, a chase beneath a pier, a world-weary police officer about to retire (William H. Macy), an all-business bad guy (Jason Statham), another car chase, a second carjacking, a woman with a roughly foreign accent, some crooked cops, and one big twist.

In all: an episode of CHiPS, or the ending of a typical action-chase film stretched to the length of an entire movie. Cellular was written by Larry Cohen, a long-time B-movie icon who penned the similar Phone Booth. He takes a kitchen sink approach that ensures his movies are never too boring, and Cellular has some fun sticking to these low-budget roots.

For a long while the script was also the subject of much insider chat in the Hollywood trades; there was talk of rewrites and reshuffled directors. Somewhere in there, though, I'd bet someone lost the point of what made Phone Booth such a nasty and effective cheap thrill.

Colin Farrell picked up a public pay phone and found himself speaking to a sniper who explained that if Colin hung up he would be shot on the spot. We never saw the person on the other end until the final moments, and Farrell himself never saw the killer at all.

Cellular hinges on a more slender thread - the possibility of a life-and-death phone call being dropped. If you've ever watched the battery meter on a phone dip into red you know this is a clever device for generating suspense - but it only works as long as the voice in danger always remains just that: a voice.

There's something spooky about a disembodied voice you don't recognize, especially when it carries that vague whiff of danger. Movies make that vague threat more real, which is only right. The second we see the caller, though, that illusion is lost.

I think of a great underrated movie called Miracle Mile (1988). Anthony Edwards gets a call from a panicked man who says he works in a nuclear missile silo and "the birds are flying," which Edwards assumes to mean that a nuclear war just started. He's not certain (and neither are we) until the end - because we never do see the other end of the phone.

Cellular has such a ingenious premise it forgets how to tell it. It gives us Basinger. Then gives us Evans (who will play the Human Torch next summer in the new Fantastic Four movie). Then establishes that their call must remain connected. This gets awkward because as Ryan jumps though his hoops, Jennifer asks what's happening, so Ryan explains everything we're seeing.

"I just stole a car," he says.

"OK," she says.

"Now a bus is front of me."

"Oh, no."

And so on.

The real suspense is how far Cellular can carry that premise - which is pretty far, making it Speed with a cell phone, in a way. But that basic structure (Ryan: "I found a guy in a Lakers jacket." Jennifer: "OK") undercuts the tension, which director David R. Ellis seems to realize: the film gradually drains of novelty and gets TV-movie routine.

Evans is likeable; Basinger and Macy take actor's holidays but manage heartfelt emotions. Statham (The Italian Job) is so intimidating he should be cast in every bad movie. The plot is pure Swiss cheese, but the only glaring hole is this: with all those cell phones going off, not one plays "The Battle Hymn of Republic."

Contact Christopher Borrelli at: cborrelli@theblade.com
or 419-724-6117.