The Call

ACTION/ADVENTURE, SUSPENSE/THRILLER

It's Already Done

8.0 out of 10 | Movie or DVD

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Rated: R Violence, some language and disturbing images.
Release Date: March 15, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes

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Director: Brad Anderson
Writers: Richard D'Ovidio, Nicole D'Ovidio, Jon Bokenkamp
Cast: Halle Berry, Abogail Breslin, Morris Chestnut, Michael Eklund, David Otunga, Michael Imperioli, Justina Machado, Evie Thompson

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SYNOPSIS: 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.

REVIEW: Transsiberian, Session 9, and The Machinist director Brad Anderson returns from a series of small screen directorial efforts. Thir13en Ghosts screenwriter Richard D'Ovidio, first-time writer Nicole D'Ovidio, and Taking Lives scribe Jon Bokenkamp deliver a tale of 911 support, suspense, and action for Academy Award winner Halle Berry.

911 operator Jordan Turner (Hale Berry, Cloud Atlas) is a dedicated capable worker. That is until a 911 call by Leah Templeton (Evie Thompson, Last Man Standing) during a home invasion goes wrong shakes Jordan from her confidence and her abilities. When the person reporting the 911 the call is found dead and buried a few days later, Jordan decides to leave 'The Hive' of the 911 call operators to become a staff trainer. Six months later, while Jordan was on a routine training session in 'The Hive', a one-year rookie gets a phone call from a girl abducted in stuffed into the trunk of a car. When the novice 911 operator can't handle the call Jordan steps in to talk to the girl Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin, New Year's Eve) and help talk her through ways to get the attentions of the authorities. Unfortunately, the abductor Michael Foster (Michael Eklund, The Divide) is more persistent and determined to keep Casey for himself. During her shift, Jordan loses Casey's signal and doesn't know what to do or where to turn. Even with her boyfriend Officer Paul Phillips (Morris Chestnut, Identity Thief) on the job for the search for Casey, Jordan finds that she can't leave the situation alone. When she discovers more information about who the abductor is she may have just sealed her own fate.

Touted as a suspense thriller The Call, in my humble opinion, lives up to expectation. From the opening scene with Jordan dealing with a 911 call gone horribly wrong, to the climatic confrontations at the end, The Call is quick paced, filled with intrigue, and a few jolts along the way. Some of the scares are classic and expected, but Brad Anderson manages to throw couple scares in there that the audience never sees coming.

An exercise in the suspense/thriller genre, the story focuses solely on Halle Berry's Jordan, Abigail Breslin's Casey and Michael Eklund's Michael Foster. The Little Miss Sunshine actress is almost all grown up and proves it with her character's determination and fight for her own survival - with Jordan's shaky, but calming and supportive voice. I say it all the time like a broken record but the heroes are only as good as their villains. Michael Eklund's Foster is as solid a villain as you could ask for. Eklund played a phenomenal loving brother turn psychopath in The Divide and uses that talents to ratchet up the creepiness and unnerving tone in every scene he is in.

The Call is a fine suspense/thriller, as well as a fine game of cat and mouse between an unsure 911 operator and an unhinged neurotic killer. The birth and psychology of Eklund's serial killer is Bates Motel creepy. It may be the month of March - the old dumping ground of unwanted films - but once or twice a year in March, a film lives up to pre-Summer expectations.

There are a few obvious silly genre tactics that warrant at-screen commentary. One involves the 911 operator's tether to the people they serve - a phone that ends up being to slippery to hold onto. Another is not knowing well enough to call the authorities (irony) when the situation becomes a little too much for one girl to have to deal with, especially when the girl's boyfriend is a strapping young officer of the law.

The Call is a suspense/thriller worth your time and energy. Berry conveys the perfect balance of urgency and fear. Eklund's Foster could be a Boy Scout leader just as easily as the psycho he is. And Abigail Breslin has grown up enough to be vulnerable, but capable. You may need to finally make the call.

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Cloud Altas

Say It Tru, Tru

★ ★ ★ ★ out of 5 buckets | Matinee and DVD

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Rated: R  Violence, language, some drug use and sexuality/nudity

Release Date: October 26, 2012

Runtime: 2 hours 52 minutes

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Director: Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski
Writers: Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, based on the best-selling by David Mitchell
Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Keith Davis, James D'Arcy, Xun Zhou, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant

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SYNOPSIS: An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.

REVIEW: The Matrix Trilogy writing and directing siblings Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski return for a visionary tale that crosses time and space, the past, present, and far future. Joined by veteran writer/director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) who has had experience with warping redundant and overlapping storylines, the Wachowskis may set another precedent of storytelling that changes how movies are created.

Cloud Atlas starts with a storyteller who begins regaling about how those around him came into being and the journey undertaken to get there. Then the clock turns forward - or back? - to the Pacific Islands where a young lawyer Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess, One Day) finishes a contract for the purchase of slaves and property. Flash forward to 1936 where another young man Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw, The International) at Cambridge flees his responsibilities and the man he loves (James D'Arcy, W.E.) to write sheet music for an aging maestro Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent, The Iron Lady) who he admires and wants to learn from. Four decades later, a young journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry, New Year's Eve) working for Spy Glass magazine finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy between Big Oil and Nuclear power. In the present (our present?) of 2012, a publisher Timothy Cavendish faces disgruntled friends of an incarcerated author Dermot Hoggins (Tom Hanks, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) and flees too hotel at the behest of his brother Denholme (Hugh Grant, The Pirates! Band of Misfits). The hotel turns out to be a residence home for the aged, an incarceration rivaling that of his author in his publishing stable, and requiring an elaborate escape plan. In the 22nd Century, a caste system had been re-established and fabricants have been engineered to serve the upper classes. A rebellion is underway, requiring a rogue fabricant Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae, As One) to pave the way to a new enlightenment. And, finally, in an unknown time, a cowardous goat herder Zachry living in a forested valley must overcome his own fears to help a technologically advanced outsider Meronym to reach the top of a forbidden mountain where secrets may be the key to his own salvation.

Cloud Atlas is a difficult film to encapsulate into words. Spanning across centuries with six distinct but connected vignettes, the film is more than just the same actors with different make-ups and backdrops. From the Pacific Islands in the middle of the 1900s to the far-flung future where New Seoul is ruled by corpocrats and a caste system of pure bloods and fabricants, Cloud Atlas covers much ground in its pursuit of the one universal truth.

With each lead actor and actress in several roles, it's a wonder that the film can be followed at all. But the Wachowskis spin and edit this three hour tale into an intricate and tight tapestry that will leave you amazed, delighted, and enlightened. It is a story of found and forlorn love against mounting odds, enduring cosmic connections, and the realization that there can not be versions of the truth - only one truth, regardless of the perspective.

The Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer create an elaborate thread of overlapping narratives, recurring themes, and recurring characters (or actors as different characters). Each of the lead actors or actresses play no less than four completely different parts in the film. Some play both men and women, heroes and villains. Whether a small role like Jim Broadbent's New Seoul Korean musician or a pivotal one in the guise of Tom Hank's Zachry who lives on Big Isle at a time of one hundred and six years after "The Fall', each plays their parts as if the characters themselves are defined for different films. The costume and visual effects are stunning. From the nineteenth century sailing ships to the consumer-driven society of the twenty-second century, the landscapes and backdrops are spectacular. But they are merely backdrops, practically, that set the stages for individualized stories of solidarity, brotherhood, faith, romance, love, determination, and truth.

The only down sides to this novel adaptation are that the speech of of New Seoul and of Big Isle requires a learning curve, and that some of the emotional content is dampened with all of the edits and breaks between the six stories. Even Tom Hanks' Dermot Hoggins in the good ole here and now, with his cockney accent, is near indecipherable at times. But you pick up the language as quick as you can, and middle through the rest. And just when you become invested in a scene or development, the creators may edit the scene away in order to compound the emotional payoff. Some times it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Cloud Atlas is a cinematic wonder, succeeding in weaving a cohesive narrator thread throughout the ages. With a superior cast and the Wachowski siblings and Tykwer's imagination and vision, this film will leave its mark on you, for good, bad, or indifferent, far longer than after the theater lights come up.

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