Phone Booth is a 2002 movie starring Colin Farrell, who is trapped in New York City's last phone booth by a sniper who threatens to kill him if he hangs up. I only saw this movie for the first time last week, and knowing the premise beforehand, my biggest story question going into the movie was 'What kind of person would hold someone hostage in a phone booth with a sniper rifle?' It just seemed like the most interesting thing about the movie from a plot perspective--Who is doing this?
Unfortunately for me, it turns out that the movie wasn't interested in answering that particular question.
Phone Booth is still a good movie. Colin Farrell is phenomenal and it's genuinely impressive how the writer was able to escalate the situation all while keeping the protagonist so physically confined. You watch it for those reasons--because it's fun to see someone get broken down and transformed through adversity, if such a tame word can be applied to the nightmare scenario Stu (Farrell) finds himself in. It's a fast-paced timebomb of a movie.
I couldn't help but wish for more, though. Stu is targeted by the sniper for being an asshole--he wants to cheat on his wife, he's stringing along his assistant without paying him, and he's rude to everyone he meets--but this didn't come close to answering the question I came into the movie. Now, I'm fully ready to admit that I'm over-thinking what is supposed to be a simple popcorn movie, but it had me questioning an interesting facet of writing --how much depth should an antagonist have?
The writer of Phone Booth obviously decided not much depth was needed for the sniper--that the fun of the movie wasn't going to be in diving into the psychology of someone who would inflict such emotional torture on such a run-of-the-mill asshole, even if I personally wanted that. I might just be the only person who feels this way about Phone Booth, but that's okay, because it helped to inform me about my writing preferences--that I enjoy complex antagonists just as much as complex protagonists.
Not every movie needs multi-dimensional villains--sometimes a simple 'evil-for-evil's-sake' bad guy is exactly what you need, but having a villain who can challenge the protagonist not only in the physical realm, but in the emotional and thematic realms too, makes for a more compelling story.
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