Talk about "Cellular" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
A twenty-something man named Ryan played by Chris Evans is driving in his car when he receives a call on his cell-phone from a woman who claims to have been kidnapped. At first he thinks it is simply a crank-call, and intends on hanging up on Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), but she persuades him to "take ten minutes out of [his] day and hand [his] cell-phone to a policeman." This phone-call causes Ryan to do drastic things, and he ends up taking matters into his own hands when the risk of losing his signal and losing the phone-call inhibits him from handing his phone to a policeman.
Review
One major problem I had throughout this film was that through all the danger and horrible things that were going on around him, Ryan had a generally cheery disposition, and it was very hard for me to take this situation seriously. Even when he had just threatened the employees of a store with a handgun, he was all-smiles. As a general rule, Ryan was portrayed as a happy guy, and his emotions didn't seem to fit the scene at any point throughout the film.
I was also deeply bothered by the fact that the police seemed choosy about what they did and did not take seriously. It's the job of the policemen to take the things reported to them as emergencies in a serious way, and to investigate fully in order to better aid the victims of crime, but the police in this movie did not do that, and I thought that was very unrealistic.
Throughout the film there were some very far-fetched parts. First off, it wasn't a very believable scenario, and then it was paired with many other mini-unbelievable-scenarios, to create a film that didn't seem at all as though it could ever happen. There was one point in time when Ryan was driving on the wrong side of a three-or-four-lane boulevard, and he somehow managed to avoid all accidents with oncoming traffic. He jerked the steering wheel back and forth, and pretended to duck, and that entire scene was horrible and I hated it.
I found it very interesting that every time Ryan took a glance at his cell-phone, whether to see if the battery was dead, or to dial a number, the NOKIA logo at the top conveniently fit into the top of every shot. At times it was as if the entire film was just one long commercial for Ryan's phone. I wonder if the entire movie wasn't built around the ability to show the same product that many times in one film without the audience being 100% aware that they were watching an extended commercial. It was shown so many times that I wonder if NOKIA didn't fund the production of the film. . .
Conclusion
This is really not a very good film. As far as thrillers go, I've never been all too impressed with the turnouts, but this one was particularly bad. There are many better films (even thrillers) out there to see. This film proves that you can't take any plotline, add overdramatic music, and shake the camera around to make a good thriller. The characters were weak, the plot was transparent and ridiculous, and the acting was incredibly false. I didn't have high hopes for this film, and to be honest, I wasn't really surprised at what I got.
