Z/Web

A decent thriller. It starts off a little weak: too much exposition, some pointless explanation. We’re forced to see the mother kiss her son off too school (shows she loves him), hear that she’s a science teacher (important as she’ll use those skills throughout the movie), etc. Though why a science teacher doesn’t leave for school before the boy gets on the school bus isn’t explained (in my experience, teachers arrive before the students). Once the story gets going, however, it doesn’t stop. The woman is suddenly kidnapped. She’s locked in an attic room and the wall phone is smashed so she can’t use it. But she figures out a way to rewire the fragments and make a call, but she can’t control who she dials. She dials randomly and a kid answers on his cell phone. Since she doesn’t even know what number she dialed or even if she could dial again, her life depends on that call. If he hangs up or they are disconnected, she’s dead. Things take a little time to get going here — at first he doesn’t believe her story, then he tries to take the phone to the police — but eventually it’s just him and her. The kidnappers are going to go steal her kid from school so she pleads with the stranger on the phone to help her, to get to the school before the kidnappers. Thus a race is started and continues, with “drama” like the cell phone’s battery dying, crossed lines with another cell phone user (Can that actually happen with today’s digital phones?), signal problems within a tunnel, etc. It’s a bit ridiculous but the performances keep you involved and things move too fast for you to be concerned about logic. The resolution is good, but the final fight in the boat house is too long and convoluted, though I did like the fight’s conclusion (which cleverly involves a cell phone). All and all, this is an odd film. It’s got moments that are obviously B-movie quality, but then it’s got good actors and some good action and a story that keeps you involved. The sum of its parts is therefore slightly more than the whole, resulting in a decent — but not great — thriller. It’s fun, but most of that fun comes from not knowing what’s going to happen and wanting to see what the producers will do with the interesting premise. I don’t know that there’s enough here to want to see the film again, which means it isn’t a classic, but it is entertaining. It’s certainly better than a lot of current films.