Girl Week 2017: Girl 6

Oldboy (2013)

The Call

Directed by Brad Anderson.

2013. Rated R, 94 minutes.

Cast:

Halle Berry

Abigail Breslin

Morris Chestnut

Michael Eklund

David Otunga

Michael Imperioli

Roma Maffia

Evie Thompson

Ross Gallo

I imagine being a 911 operator is stressful. Real matters of life and death probably comprise at least several calls a day. Whether someone survives until the next sunrise may depend on your ability to keep a frantic person calm in the face of danger and/or wrestle information from someone currently incapable of thinking clearly. It’s a life Jordan Turner knows all too well. She is good at her job, but as the old saying goes, you can’t win them all. A loss in this case is fielding a call from a scared young girl because an intruder is in her home. As cell phones are wont to do, the call is dropped during this crucial situation. Jordan immediately calls the girl back which turns out to be a very bad idea. When it rings on the girl’s end it clues in the bad guy to the whereabouts of his prey. He proceeds to murder the girl before the police can get there.

Fast-forward six months. Jordan is so distraught, she’s resigned from her post on the boards, takes lots of meds, and now trains newbies. She is giving a tour of the floor when a rookie operator takes a call from another frightened girl. This one is named Casey Welson (Breslin). With the rook proving useless, Jordan has to jump back into her old role in an effort to help the poor child. The firs issue is that she is calling from a disposable, and therefore more difficult to trace, cell phone. The second makes things even tougher. She is traveling, but completely unaware of where she is or where she is going because she has just woken up in the trunk of a moving car.

For a sizable chunk of the movie, we watch and listen as Jordan tries to help Casey find ways to make her presence known to others, figure out where she is, and/or escape. Meanwhile, Jordan’s bosses try to track that call and Officer Phillips (Chestnut), the cop who happens to be Jordan’s boyfriend, chases every lead they throw his way. And just to demonstrate his ruthlessness, our bad guy (Eklund) is forced to hurt and/or kill anyone who figures out too much. This portion of our film is intriguing. At times, it is edge-of-your-seat stuff as we really feel like whatever the girl does next could decide if she lives or dies. Some of the things Jordan has her do are simply brilliant. When these things are mildly successful, civilians get involved with mixed results.

Through it all, Halle Berry gives us her best concerned and horrified look. I’ve written a number of times that I don’t feel she is not nearly as good an actress as she is good looking. However, I will give credit where it is due and say she’s pretty strong here. She manages to make us feel how much she cares about this situation, not just for the girl’s sake, but also for her own. It helps that she has a really good performance to bounce off. The work of Abigail Breslin as the victim is outstanding “scream queen” material. Yes, she screams a lot. She also whimpers, snivels, and pleads her way into our hearts.

Unfortunately, when act three gets cranking everything falls apart. It’s no surprise that our bad guy has been twisted since birth, but just how much so might be overkill, pardon the pun. Still, this isn’t as bothersome as what happens with our other two principals. For starters, our 911 operator turns super-sleuth and is, in fact, a far better detective than anyone in the police department. I won’t tell you what happens after that for fear of spoiling the movie, but suffice it to say it’s overly contrived and completely inconsistent with the characters we’ve been watching until that point. The Call becomes yet another film with a great premise that seems to be delivering on its potential for quite a while until it crumbles under its own weight.

The shame of it all is that the first two acts work so well our anticipation is peaking just as it becomes plain that the conclusion is coming. The entire thing is a situation many of us are fearful of in real life, no matter how remote the chance of it actually happening. Seeing it play out here taps into this anxiety. It does double the damage for those of us with kids who might be out and about on their own. Therefore, we want to see how it ends. Sadly, when we do we can’t help notice it took all that goodness it had going and made a mess of itself.

The Lovely Bones

Directed by Peter Jackson.
2009. Rated PG-13, 136 minutes.
Cast:
Saoirse Ronan
Stanley Tucci
Mark Wahlberg
Rachel Weisz
Susan Sarandon
Michael Imperioli
Rose McIver
Reese Ritchie
Carolyn Dando
Nikki SooHoo
Christian Thomas Ashdale

Susie (Ronan) is your everyday, boy-crazy 14 year old in 1973. Well, we think she is. However, we very quickly discover she’s already been murdered. She even tells us that Mr. Harvey (Tucci) is her killer. Since we get all this information at the beginning of the picture, we know this is no ordinary murder mystery. But there is mystery. The obvious question becomes will Mr. Harvey be caught? There are other questions to be answered, as well. Mainly, how does Susie’s death affect her family. That aspect is explored in-depth. We can see how each person copes, or doesn’t cope with the situation. This includes Susie, who continually narrates to us from the other side while trying to find her way to Heaven.

Speaking of narration, I’ve never been a huge fan of it in movies. I freely admit if it is done right, it’s a great asset to a film. Here, it’s done right. The key is Susie rarely, if ever, crosses the line of giving us too much information. More importantly, she steers clear of simply recapping what we just saw or telling us what we’re about to see, for the most part. Essentially, she thinks out loud so that we see her perspective changing as we move along.

Playing the role of Susie, Ronan does an excellent job. Even though she spills the beans on the major details early, her performance conveys the idea there is much still to be discovered. As she, and we, come upon these revelations she is appropriately amazed and dismayed. While Ronan is good, there are two other performances that are simply perfect. The one you may know about is Stanley Tucci’s Oscar nominated portrayal of our villain, Mr. Harvey. It’s an amazing piece of work. Helpfully, it is a very well written character. He’s downright gentlemanly in his approach to most things. If we didn’t know any better, we’d think he was just some non-descript fellow who lives in the neighborhood, the scariest kind of boogeyman. The other great performance has flown under the radar. Susan Sarandon as the chain-smoking, and chain-drinking grandmother is absolutely fabulous. Her drunken wisdom and lack of domestic capabilities add both levity and comic relief. Sarandon strikes the perfect balance. In the process, she becomes the linchpin that keeps the family and potentially the movie from spiraling completely out of control.

There are times when the movie does indeed seem to take leave of its faculties. Most of these occur when the focus is on Samantha’s excursions in the afterlife. These portions of the film try to wow us with exoticvisuals. Instead, it takes what’s already a far-fetched premise and pushes it to the brink of total inaccessibility. There is also her constant lament of not having had a first kiss while alive. While that’s understandable from a teenage girl, the way this particular issue is resolved is a bizarre piece of b-movie madness that threatens to sink the movie. The same goes for her sister’s lame-brained effort at heroism that miraculously turns out far better, far easier than it should. Those issues aside, TLB is an excellent watch that intrigues us at almost every turn. It makes us empathize with Susie’s family. Eventually, we feel as if we lost a loved one. And though it’s not a horror film, it frightens us just enough to keep us on the edges of our seats.

MY SCORE: 8/10