The power of such a small device and those that respond to its calls is laid out in this tight, tense and flawed thriller.
What They Say:
When veteran 911 operator Jordan Turner receives a call from a girl who has just been abducted, she soon realizes that she must confront a killer from her past in order to save the girl’s life.
The Review:
When the trailers for The Call first hit, it was pretty much off my radar and I had little interest in it. Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of Halle Berry’s work. And that goes beyond the awful Catwoman movie. As lauded as she is, she’s just not clicked for me in the various roles over the years, either in supporting pieces or as the primary player, particularly when it comes to genre films such as X-Men or her stint in the James Bond universe. But The Call beckoned and I ended up seeing it on opening night to a fairly packed audience, which was certainly interesting since so many of the teenagers in there were just captivated by it as it progressed, cringing with so many of the moments. One of the things that made me intrigued is that it was directed by Brad Anderson, a name that stuck in my head for his solid work directing several key episodes of the Fringe TV series over the years. Bringing that kind of procedural directing to this film, it definitely worked and made the $13 million budgeted feature move quickly, though with some flaws in the characters.
Though at times the film may feel like it’s promoting the importance of the 911 service, the people who work it and the pressures they face, as well as obvious nods towards the scope of what the police do in general and in situations like this, it’s very much a character film. We’re introduced to Jordan, a solid and experienced 911 operator played by Halle Berry who is calm, confident and knows what she does but also knows that she’s human. During one call, she has to deal with a teenage girl who has an intruder in her home, but through a mistake on Jordan’s part, the girl is found by the intruder and the teens body is later found by the police after being dealt with in some mysterious but brutal fashion. Jordan spoke to the intruder briefly on the phone, and the whole ordeal shifted her from being able to handle the responsibility of the position to teaching others the job and training them. Which at least makes good use of the investment in her and her skills.
Fast forward to many months later as she’s showing a group around the command center, called the hive, and one of the operators, a recent trainee herself, ends up in a call with a kidnapping from a local mall that has occurred. The girl, Casey, is stuck in the trunk with a disposable phone so it can’t be traced easily and is in a real panic. Naturally, Jordan takes over and starts working it and the film follows that exploit right through the end. With a ninety minute run time, the feature doesn’t spend a ton of time on the setup overall and instead spends the majority of it on the chase itself. But we get the setup decently enough as we see Casey at the mall with a friend, the way the same killer manages to catch her and throw her into his car and then the lengthy journey to where he wants to go to do whatever it is he wants to with her. With Casey in the trunk, we get to see how technology and tracking deals with these kinds of situations, sometimes good, sometimes badly, with what help Casey is able to offer from her perspective. There are some neat moments here, but they’re also moments that get “ruined” within the story by other people that want to help and end up making things worse.
There’s a good tightness about the film in the second half that you don’t usually see as that’s where Casey’s story really gets underway and Abigal Breslin plays her well, young and scared but not entirely stupid. She makes some mistakes but also shows initiative. We don’t get a lot about who she is, but in this situation it’s kept simple because the focus is on keeping her alive. Berry’s character doesn’t get much development either, but she’s trying to get past her issues with the previous kidnapping that went bad and to make sure it doesn’t happen again since she’s convinced it’s the same killer. With so much of the film in the first two acts operating at a distance, her in the hive and the victims out in the world, there’s a disconnect to be had that’s wonderfully bridged by the intensity of the call itself, the dialogue that’s had and simply the way that connection is forged in hopes of saving a life. In that regard, both Breslin and Berry did very, very well here in making it engaging and tense.
Where the film fell apart for me was in the third act, and consider this to be full of spoilers. When the discovery of the killers identity and the location of where he may be is revealed, we get lots of cops there checking it out but coming up empty. And then they leave. No specialists investigating the place, nobody left behind to check things out. There’s boxes of medication, pictures and other things that could have been clues. And in fact, were clues to the killers mental state. Michael Eklund plays the disturbed killer very well here as he’s compelled to do these acts, doesn’t want to, but is unable to stop and is truly conflicted about it. It doesn’t absolve him, but it makes him more than a caricature. As others are drawn into his kidnapping gone awry because of what Casey does, he continually blames her for it as he pushes the responsibility of his actions elsewhere. And responsible is not what Berry’s character is in that third act. When she goes to the location the police decided was pointless, she ends up finding a secret underground place where the real deal is going down. She stupidly drops her phone in there where there’s no service and then she proceeds to get it and not come back out to make an obviously important call. She just goes further in and plays the hero of it all in rescuing Casey. Which you can understand on some layer as she wants to make up for a past mistake. But it’s just so needless and out of place for someone who has played it by the book strongly in her 911 role. Even worse is the actual ending where she and Casey deal with the killer and leave him to die there, chained to a chair, as a revenge act for what he did. I saw plenty of discussion as to whether they called anyone or not after the credits rolled, but it didn’t matter for me. It completely changed Berry’s character as one who wanted justice for the many victims to be one that denied closure to them because of this act. And should anyone actually find this place eventually, well, her prints are everywhere. That’ll be awkward and full of lawsuits.
In Summary:
The Call wasn’t initially on my must-see list by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed in the first two acts as an aspirant of sorts to Silence of the Lambs in what it wanted to accomplish. It provided a different angle to work through, some good one dimensional characters that were well played and a real tightness and tenseness about the script and its pacing. It certainly reminds you of the hard work that people in this business really do go through., especially at a time when such services across the nation are threatened by budget cuts as it would impact real lives. Berry and Breslin are good in their roles and it’s another piece in the career for Breslin who makes me even more curious as to what kind of actress she’ll become as she gets older. There’s a solid film here overall, one that I would have recommended a lot more if not for the essentially fatal flaws of what the characters do in the third act. But it’s almost, almost worth it for those first two acts alone.
Grade: B-
