Cellular (film)

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Cellular

Directed by	David R. Ellis
Produced by	Dean Devlin, Lauren Lloyd
Written by	Larry Cohen story, Chris Morgan (screenplay)
Starring	Chris Evans Kim Basinger Jason Statham William H. Macy
Music by	Garrett Dutton, John Ottman
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	September 10, 2004
Running time	94 min.
Language	English
Budget	$25,000,000
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Cellular is a good 2004 suspense thriller, directed by David R. Ellis and starring Kim Basinger and Chris Evans. The screenplay was written by Chris Morgan and Larry Cohen, the latter having also scripted Phone Booth, another movie that revolves around a phone conversation.

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Trivia
4 Reactions
5 Box office
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Jessica Martin (played by Basinger), a high school biology teacher, is taken from her home by five assailants to an unknown location. Not knowing anything about her abductors (one of whom is played by Statham), she puts together a broken telephone and manages to call a random number in an attempt to save herself.

Ryan (played by Evans), answers the call on his mobile phone, and begins driving all over Los Angeles to try to help Jessica, who informs him that the kidnappers are after her son and husband next. Ryan must ensure he stays on the line and nothing threatens or breaks his connection.

William H. Macy plays Mooney, a police officer who briefly encounters Ryan and begins to unravel the mystery of the kidnappers.

[edit] Cast

Actor/Actress	Role
Kim Basinger	Jessica Kate Martin
Chris Evans	Ryan
William H. Macy	Off. Bob Mooney
Jason Statham	Ethan
Noah Emmerich	Det. Jack Tanner
Eric Etebari	Dmitri
Matt McColm	Deason
Valerie Cruz	Dana Bayback
Richard Burgi	Craig Martin
Adam Taylor Gordon	Ricky Martin
Rick Hoffman	Lawyer
Eric Christian Olsen	Chad
Jessica Biel	Chloe

[edit] Trivia

Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber did uncredited rewrites of the script.
On the 5 August 2004 edition of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Kim Basinger said that when she was talking on a cellular phone while standing outside a movie house bathroom waiting for a friend, she became very annoyed at the small, rude crowd that had gathered around to point and laugh at her. It was only after her friend exited the bathroom and pointed out that Basinger was standing directly in front of poster for Cellular that depicted her talking on a cellular phone did she understand why everyone was laughing at her.
Larry Cohen worked on the script while he tried to get his screenplay Phone Booth sold. In a New Yorker article he says he wrote the film with the intention that it would be the direct opposite to Phone Booth (Phone Booth is about a man trapped on a phone in a booth, while this movie is about a man who is still trapped on a phone but can go anywhere). However, his friends told him that he had written the same screenplay twice.
Several references to New Line Cinema (the financing studio) throughout the film:
- New Line Chairman Robert Shaye has a cameo as the irate man in the police station.
- Ricky's backpack displays the logo of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
- At the kidnappers' house, the New Line Cinema movie Final Destination 2 is playing on the television (directed by Cellular's director, David R. Ellis).
- Producer Dean Devlin has a cameo as the cab driver who drives Ryan.
- When Ryan is at LAX airport, you can hear the boarding call for "Flight 180 to Paris". That is the same plane that blew up in Final Destination, also from New Line Cinema.
This film was set to be Dean Devlin's directorial debut, but he decided to produce instead.
The phone Ryan is using is a Nokia 6600.
Chris Evans performed his own car stunts. Before production began, he was trained for five weeks at a Los Angeles stunt school. Most of the other stunts are done by the actors themselves as well.
The tattoo on Ryan's right arm is the Japanese character for "loyalty" and "honor", the defining heroic trait of this otherwise completely ordinary boy.
The phone that Chris Evans used while filming did not actually function. However, he used an earpiece so he could hear Kim Basinger's lines during his scenes.
At the end of the movie when Chris Evan's character Ryan pulls out the cell phone from his pocket to reveal that he uploaded the video clip into it, the cell phone should be broken because he jumped into the ocean earlier to avoid being spotted by his pursuers (unless the thick jacket he sports in the dock scenes of the film is indeed waterproof, as it appears to be)
A remix of the song Sinnerman by singer/pianist/songwriter Nina Simone was used on the soundtrack of this film.
Both Chris Evans and Eric Christian Olsen appear in Not Another Teen Movie.

[edit] Reactions

The overall reactions to the critics were lukewarm (only 54% on the tomato-meter[1]). However, film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave it "Two Thumbs Up!". On Ebert's review, he explains that there are so many ridiculous things, you'll just have to follow it and giving this film a 3.5/4 and saying "This is one of the year's best thrillers. Better than Phone Booth, for my money, and I liked that, too. Roeper called this film "...ingenious." The overall reactions to the people were higher, a 6.5/10 [2].