Cellular movie review & film summary (2004)
Kim Basinger stars as Jessica, a high school science teacher who is kidnapped by violent home invaders and held prisoner in an attic. The men who have taken her want something from her husband -- something she knows nothing about. They know where her young son Ricky (Adam Taylor Gordon) attends school and plan to kidnap him, too. The kidnappers are hard men, especially their cold, intense leader Greer, played by Jason Statham. Because they've allowed Jessica to see them, she assumes they will eventually kill her.
The attic has a wall phone, which a kidnapper smashes to bits. But Jessica the science teacher is able to fit some of the parts back together and click on the wires to make a call -- at random. She reaches Ryan (Chris Evans), a twentysomething kid who at first doesn't believe her when she says she has been kidnapped. At one point, he even puts her on hold; that's part of the movie's strategy of building our frustration by creating one believable obstacle after another. Jessica pleads with him not to hang up, to trust her enough to hand his cell phone to a cop. Something in her voice convinces him. He walks into a police station and hands the phone to a desk cop named Mooney (William H. Macy), who gets sidetracked and advises him to go to homicide, up on the fourth floor. Uh-huh. But Mooney, too, hears something in her voice, and later in the day it still resonates. He's not your typical hot-dog movie cop, but a quiet, thoughtful professional with unexpected resources.
The movie's surprises, when they come, mostly seem to make sense. When we find out who the kidnappers are, and what it is they want from Jessica's husband, it doesn't seem like too much of a reach. But the real fun of the movie comes from the hoops Ryan has to jump through in order to somehow stay on the line with Jessica, convince people he's not crazy, and get personally involved in the deadly climax. Yes, the action scenes are over the top, and yes, the chase scenes involve unthinkable carnage on the freeways, but, yes, we go along because the motivations and strategies of the characters are strong and clear.
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