Cellular is a 2004 crime thriller, directed by David R. Ellis and starring Kim Basinger and Chris Evans. The screenplay was written by Chris Morgan & Larry Cohen and J. Mackye Gruber, the latter having also scripted Phone Booth, another movie that evolves from a phone call.
Plot
Mysterious assailants kidnap high school biology teacher Jessica Martin (Basinger) and confine her in the attic of their safe house. Ethan (Statham), the gang leader, smashes the attic's telephone to prevent her from contacting anyone. She has no idea who the kidnappers are or what they want. She pieces together the broken phone to randomly make a connection. She finally reaches the cell phone of Ryan (Evans) who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, Chloe (Biel), for being too irresponsible. He takes it as a joke at first, but Jessica persuades him to go to the police. At the police station, Officer Mooney (Macy) tells him to go to the detectives on the fourth floor. He begins to lose the signal in the stairwell, so he turns back to avoid losing the connection.
Meanwhile, Ethan comes in and tells Jessica that he is going to get her husband and son. Ryan, who overhears them, is now convinced that the kidnapping is real. After Ethan leaves, she tells Ryan to get to her son's school before they do. Unfortunately, he is too late and her son, Ricky (Gordon), is kidnapped. Ryan hijacks a security officer's car and gives chase. Because his cell phone's battery is dying, he drives to a shop for a charger. After being repeatedly redirected from counter to counter, he uses a gun from the security vehicle to hold up the store and get the charger.
Mooney meanwhile decides to check on the kidnapping claim that he received. He uses the DMV records to find the address of Jessica Martin, but when he comes to her house, a woman meets him, telling him that she is Jessica and that everything is fine.
Believing it to be a false alarm, he leaves. But soon enough it is revealed that the woman is Dana Bayback (Cruz), an accomplice of the kidnappers. Meanwhile, Ethan imprisons Ricky in the garage and threatens to kill him if Jessica does not tell him where her husband is. She tells him that he is at a bar called Left Field in LAX. As Ethan leaves, she tells Ryan that they have gone to get her husband. Suddenly, a cross-connection between phone lines threatens the carrier signal. A lawyer (Hoffman) talking to his mother breaks in.
Ryan finds the lawyer and parks his car in the middle of an intersection. Ryan pulls the gun and demands the lawyer's phone when a truck smashes into the security car. Ryan carjacks the lawyer and speeds off.
She tells him to head for LAX and find her husband. At the airport, he tries to stop the kidnappers by planting the gun under one of their jackets. The gun trips the alarm and security intervenes, but the kidnappers flash police badges. Meanwhile, Ryan finds a man that matches Jessica's description of her husband, Craig (Burgi), but he soon realizes he has made a mistake. He looks over to see the kidnappers apprehend the real Craig.
On exiting the airport, he finds that the lawyer's car has been impounded. Meanwhile, a series of bizarre incidents have snaked their way into the news, including the one about a gunman who took a mobile charger and overpaid for it and an interview with the lawyer who states that his car was stolen by a man claiming it was to rescue a woman named Jessica Martin. Mooney sees the news and identifies Ryan. He calls Jessica's home and gets the voice mail, but this time notices that Jessica's voice on the answering machine is very different from the accented voice of the woman who claimed to be her.
Craig is brought into the attic and forced to reveal the location of a videotape. He tells them that it is at Centurion Bank in his safe deposit box, but that they need him to retrieve it. Ethan and his friends Dimitri and Deason go with Craig while another kidnapper stays on guard. Ryan also reaches the bank. The kidnappers retrieve the video-camera, but Ryan knocks down Dimitri, takes the camera, and flees to the roof. However, he accidentally drops the cell phone off the roof, smashing it to pieces. He manages to escape in a taxi, telling the driver to go to the LAPD Auto Impound. In the taxi, he checks out the camera. He sees that when Craig was taking some video footage of houses for his realtor job, he accidentally shot footage of LAPD Detectives Ethan; Mad Dog (Kelly); Dimitri (Etebari); Bayback; Deason (McColm); and Jack Tanner (Emmerich), a friend of Officer Mooney; robbing and murdering drug dealers. Ryan steals the lawyer's car again and gets back his own cellphone.
Mooney returns to the Martin residence, where Bayback shoots at him, injuring him. He retaliates and kills her, but learns to his dismay that she was a cop, too.
Meanwhile, Mad Dog stumbles upon the phone line Jessica is using from the downstairs phone, and Jessica is forced to kill him by cutting his brachial artery before he could kill her. She attempts to escape with her son, but Ethan returns with Craig as a hostage and stops her. He is angry with her, wanting to know who that kid at the bank was. Before Ethan can do anything, Ryan uses his cell phone's memory to contact Ethan and makes a deal directly over the phone: the video tape in exchange for the Martin family. Upon learning of the meeting, Tanner convinces Mooney to delay his trip to the hospital for stitches so that he can identify Ryan, who Mooney still thinks of as a prime suspect.
The deal goes down at the Santa Monica Pier. Ryan tries to handle it his way in disguise, but his ex-girlfriend accidentally exposes him, after which Mooney is able to finger him. While Tanner sends Dimitri to help Mooney get needed medical attention, he takes Ryan to Ethan. Ethan destroys the video recording and Tanner radios the order to kill the Martins, although Deason in the van suggests to wait until they get to the safe house. However, Mooney overhears the radio transmission from Dimitri's radio and he realizes that Tanner is one of the kidnappers. Ryan escapes following a distraction, while Dmitri attempts to kill Mooney, but Mooney overpowers and handcuffs him. Tanner and Ethan confront Ryan in a boathouse, where Ryan knocks out Tanner, but Ethan beats him up with his superior fighting skills until Mooney intervenes. After a brief cat and mouse game, Ryan, wounded, notices that Ethan has circled behind Mooney, and helps Mooney by calling Ethan's cell phone. The ring of the cell betrays Ethan's hiding place, and Mooney promptly shoots him dead.
While this was going on, Jessica manages to strangle Deason with her handcuff chain from the rear of their van, then free her husband and son. But Deason was merely stunned, and aims his gun at them. Then Ryan suddenly intervenes and smashes him around till he's unconscious.
While they are being treated by medics, Tanner is also exposed, because Ryan had made a copy of the videocam recording onto his cell phone, and the Martin family is set free. Jessica finally gets to meet the man who has risked his life saving her and her family. Ryan's only request for her is never to call him again, and they part amicably.
Cast
Filming locations
"Cellular" was filmed in Southern California, most notably in Santa Monica, Westwood, downtown L.A. and west Los Angeles.[1]
Reception
The overall reaction of the critics was lukewarm, receiving only 54% on the Tomato-Meter.[2] However, film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave it "Two Thumbs Up!" Ebert gave the film 3.5/4, saying: "This is one of the year's best thrillers. Better than Phone Booth, for my money, and I liked that, too".[3] Roeper called this film "[…] ingenious." The weighted rating on IMDB is 6.5/10.[4]
Trivia
- In one scene, where the robbers are still in the household, it can clearly be noticed they are watching Final Destination 2, which was directed by the same director of Cellular.
- At LAX, it can be heard that "Volee Air Flight 180 to Paris is now in the final boarding process". This is the same flight that crashed in the movie Final Destination.
- Chris Evans, Jason Statham and Jessica Biel also share credits on London.
Box office
This film made $56,051,920: $32,003,620 in the U.S. and $24,048,300 in the rest of the world.[5]
Remake
The film inspired a 2008 Chinese language remake by director Benny Chan. The film, Connected stars Barbie Hsu and Louis Koo in the Basinger and Evans roles respectively. A Bollywood remake of this film called Speed was released in India in 2007 and despite being a multi-starrer could not succeed like the original.
Home Video
Cellular was released worldwide in widescreen on DVD along with the VHS format on January 18, 2005.
A Blu-ray Disc is planned to be released.
References
External links
