Rather hang up on this call
6 April 2013 12:00 AM GMT
The Call is one of those Hollywood thrillers that rides on a hackneyed plot, with a hope that charisma of the star will turn the film around for good. Halle Berry, to be honest, tries hard to liven up the film. But, thanks to one too many loopholes, she, alas, falls into the cliches trap, making do with whatever that comes her way.
As the story goes, we have a serial killer who’s scalping blondes. Halle Berry, who plays LAPD 911 operator, Jordan Turner, receives the call from the first victim. She almost saves her. But for someone so brilliant, she redials the number when the call gets cut (duh!), ringing the death knell of the girl. Needless to say, after that it gets personal with Turner. When the next victim calls, Berry’s Turner is at it – she wants to save the girl, no matter what. So out she goes and finds the man who eludes the entire police force and – under normal circumstances, we would have called a spoiler alert at this juncture, but there’s no real plot to spoil, so there we go – saves the girl.
But. The Call is not a complete flop either. There’s Berry to begin with. Sure, she has shades of her cat woman when she decides to go killer hunting. But Berry brings out her character’s trauma at realising she had invariably aided the killer the first time round and the determination later to nail the guy, quite well. The director, Brad Anderson, has also managed to pace the film remarkably taut – especially in the scenes when Berry’s Turner is aiding victims. If only Anderson and team could have thought out a bigger scenario than the one that was presented finally as killer’s motive. Mind numbingly commonplace.
As the story goes, we have a serial killer who’s scalping blondes. Halle Berry, who plays LAPD 911 operator, Jordan Turner, receives the call from the first victim. She almost saves her. But for someone so brilliant, she redials the number when the call gets cut (duh!), ringing the death knell of the girl. Needless to say, after that it gets personal with Turner. When the next victim calls, Berry’s Turner is at it – she wants to save the girl, no matter what. So out she goes and finds the man who eludes the entire police force and – under normal circumstances, we would have called a spoiler alert at this juncture, but there’s no real plot to spoil, so there we go – saves the girl.
But. The Call is not a complete flop either. There’s Berry to begin with. Sure, she has shades of her cat woman when she decides to go killer hunting. But Berry brings out her character’s trauma at realising she had invariably aided the killer the first time round and the determination later to nail the guy, quite well. The director, Brad Anderson, has also managed to pace the film remarkably taut – especially in the scenes when Berry’s Turner is aiding victims. If only Anderson and team could have thought out a bigger scenario than the one that was presented finally as killer’s motive. Mind numbingly commonplace.
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