Call, The (2013) [Blu-ray]
Thriller

Tagline: There are 188 million 911 calls a year. This one made it personal.

In this heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat thriller, veteran 911 operator Jordan (Academy Award Winner Halle Berry, Monster's Ball, 2001) takes a life-altering call from a teenage girl (Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine, 2006) who has been kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a madman's car. But with the clock ticking, Jordan soon realizes she must confront a killer from her past to put an end to a serial killer's haunting rampage. Also starring Morris Chestnut.

Storyline: Jordan Turner (Halle Berry) is an experienced 911 operator but when she makes an error in judgment and a call ends badly, Jordan is rattled and unsure if she can continue. But then teenager Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin) is abducted in the back of a man's car and calls 911. And Jordan is the one called upon to use all of her experience, insights and quick thinking to help Casey escape, and not just to save Casey, but to make sure the man is brought to justice. Written by napierslogs

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman on June 24, 2013 -- Stay emotionally detached.

It's comforting to know that there are good people out there to counter the bad people, that there are people willing to take not only the physical risks but also the emotional risks to save a life, to become an instant friend, to talk someone through a crisis, to focus all their attention on one person, one stranger, one nobody in a sea of victims that come and go as quickly, it seems, as their hushed or hurried or desperate or down voices travel through wires and bounce off satellites and spill through communications receivers. It's even more encouraging to realize that, for many of these people, the help they give is sincere and not merely a routine performed for a paycheck, that some of them understand -- and embrace -- that they're doing what they can for the greater good, even if it's just lending a reassuring voice, flipping the right switches, and pushing the right buttons. 911 Operators may be amongst the most invisible, least-prasied of the everyday heroes, but their job is perhaps the most important of all, requiring excellent organizational skills to go along with that calming effect that can be just as important as the speeding ambulance or the armed police officers. But they must exercise caution, too, removing emotion from the equation, at least as best they can, and understanding and accepting not only the lack of gratitude but the very real truth that, ultimately, the resolution to nearly each and every call is completely out of their hands. In Director Brad Anderson's (The Machinist) The Call, a highly skilled 911 operator is forced to make difficult choices, assess and reassess an ever-evolving situation that she can neither see nor fully understand, and try to maintain her composure and protocol while handling the most intense and immediate call she's ever received.

Veteran 911 operator Jordan Turner (Halle Berry) desperately tries to save a young kidnapping victim's life, but she fails. The call is disconnected and the matter is suddenly out of her hands. Later, news of the discovery of the victim's body is all over the television. Jordan escapes from the rigors of phone duty by guiding new employees through the do's-and-don't's of the system, but she's forced back into duty when a relatively inexperienced operator finds herself incapable of handling a very urgent and dramatic kidnapping call. Teenager Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin) has been kidnapped in a mall parking lot and forced into the trunk of a car. Thankfully, her forgetful friend left her a pay-as-you-go TracFone that slipped past her kidnapper. Jordan talks Casey through the situation, helping her in any way she can to attract attention or describe her surroundings. Unfortunately, the phone cannot be easily traced. Casey does her best, but her kidnapper remains one step ahead, despite a number of obstacles along the way. As the case unfolds and the truth comes into focus, Casey and her kidnapper seem only to be slipping further away. It'll be up to Jordan to put the pieces together and save Casey, if she can.

The Call does far more right than wrong, though the "wrong" comes at the end of the movie and leaves a fairly sour taste in the mouth after a strong first two acts. At its best, which is the bulk of the film, The Call engenders a fairly consistent intensity. The emotional roller coaster of spine-tingling highs and lows defines the picture's ebb and flow, and the tension remains even though there's never much doubt as to the ultimate fate of the characters involved. The film works so well because it pits basic good versus basic evil. It's not some overly complicated dark drama with tangled themes but rather an effectively straightforward story that makes it incredibly easy to cheer on innocence and root against evil. There's a rawness to the movie, not in style but certainly in theme, in the way the picture contrasts the good on one side with the evil on the other with that innocence caught in the middle. The movie is never understated but never does it venture too far towards the other end and manufacture emotions or force-feed the audience. Instead, the emotions flow freely in the pursuit of justice and the audience's determination through almost sheer will to force the right outcome. Brad Anderson does a fabulous job of placing the audience in Jordan's shoes and guiding it to feel the sense of panic and unknown even as the film follows Casey through her ordeal. The audience feels the pull from both sides and feeds off the emotions coming from every angle. It's surpassingly well done for a movie that could have been a by-the-book Thriller. Certainly the ending disappoints, not just because it ditches the very real emotional attachment for standard cinema sensationalism but also because of a final few seconds that really seem to betray the characters by painting them in, suddenly, an entirely different light.

Another area of success for the film is in its ability to depict the realities -- the stresses, the uncertainty, the suddenness, the need for detachment -- from the frantic world of what they label "the hive," or the 911 call center. Even dramatized, no doubt, for film, the effect seems very real and the immediacy of the calls, the need to think on one's feet, and the requirement to maintain composure even under the sudden onslaught of oftentimes terrible emotions are all very smartly and expertly established. Halle Berry is fantastic in the part, selling a veteran composure but very humanly betraying, at times, the job's strict requirements by wearing her emotions on her sleeve, emotions that lead her to a firm dedication to saving the girl and in the formation of the understandably close emotional attachment that forms the longer they stay together on the line and the more harrowing the kidnapping experience becomes. Those emotions also help give shape to her decisions later in the film that, no matter one's reaction, are at least fully understandable in the greater context of the wave of powerful feelings that shape the ebb and flow of the movie. Breslin, too, delivers a quality performance through almost nothing more than her ability to react to the realities of the kidnapping, to truly express the raw pain and disbelief and fully enveloping terror that only heighten the drama, further draw out the audience's emotions, and strengthen the budding attachment she has with Berry's Jordan. Michael Eklund is excellent as the unassuming villain, and Sopranos star and tequila pitchman Michael Imperioli is fantastic as a good samaritan caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Call isn't the world's most original movie, and it's really fairly predictable save for the turn it takes in the final moments, but the movie works on raw emotion and its simple yet hugely effective pitting of good versus evil. The film creates a tense dramatic current that never relents. It's very polished and smartly put together, helped tremendously by a few seamless performances from the leads. Don't look for The Call to dominate the Oscars, but do make a point to see it; it's a Thriller well worth the price of admission, even if it doesn't bend or break the mold. Sony's Blu-ray release of The Call features top-end video and audio. A healthy assortment of supplements are included. Highly recommended.

User Comment: hotsocket from California,14 March 2013 • I enjoyed this film quite a bit: it kept a good pace of tension which makes for a good thriller. The acting is good (no academy awards), and it did a good job of giving a glimpse into the operations of 911 call centers which is a fresh topic - and it did so without dragging the pace.

The main bad guy becomes ever more creepy as the plot progresses which helps build the tension. The ending takes an interesting twist which, in the moment, doesn't feel quite as out-of-character as others describe - mainly due to a good segue shot that probably took more than a few takes to get right.

The weak spots consist mainly of some CSI style technology leaps that only technology morons would buy into, and a single bit of clumsiness that just feels scripted. Unfortunately the CSI technology leaps are very popular in Hollywood (to my dismay) and the bit of clumsiness is key to the plot progression.

If one or two minor transgressions make you feel like you wasted your money, wait for it to show up on Netflix. If you enjoy a good edge of your seat thriller and can overlook the transgressions, go see it!

Summary: Good thriller with a couple of weak spots

[CSW] -3.5- This is a taut, well-constructed thriller. So much of this movie hinges on the performances given by Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin, and you, as an audience member, really get a sensation of the same exact stress that they go through. Character build for the first 10 minutes and then it is a roller coaster ride the entire movie from that point till the end. Emotional, edge of your seat thriller along with a little humor just at the right times.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.


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