Cellular

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with Jessica Martin, a high school biology teacher, talking to her son Ricky, while escorting him to the school bus. After she returns home, mysterious assailants enter her home through the back door, kill her house maid, kidnap her and confine her in the attic of their safe house. Ethan, the gang leader, smashes the only telephone in the attic 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 who has just been dumped by his girlfriend for being too irresponsible. He takes it as a joke, but Jessica persuades him to go to the police. At the police station, Officer Mooney tells him to go to the detectives on the fourth floor. He begins to lose the signal in the stairwell, and must turn back to avoid losing the connection.Meanwhile, Ethan returns to the safehouse and asks Jessica about something she doesn't know. When Jessica tells him that she doesn't know, he tells her that he is going to get her son. Ryan, who overhears them, realizes how serious the kidnapping situation is. 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, is kidnapped and he quickly chases them by stealing a car owned by a school security officer. 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 at gun-point to obtain the device.Sgt. Mooney, meanwhile, decides to check on the kidnapping claim that he received. He uses the Department of Motor Vehicles records to find the address of Jessica, 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. It is revealed that the woman is Dana Bayback, an accomplice of the kidnappers.Ethan returns to the safe house and asks Jessica for the location of a place called "The Left Field", where her husband, Craig, was. Ethan then shows that he has imprisoned Ricky in the garage and threatens to kill him if Jessica does not tell him what this this information means. She tells him that Left Field is a bar in the LAX airport. As he 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 talking to his mother breaks in. Ryan is able to find the lawyer and steal his car and phone, since his phone was cut off from Jessica's and the security car was just destroyed by an oncoming vehicle. She tells him to head for LAX and find her husband. At the airport, he tries to stop the kidnappers by planting the security firearm in the bag of one of them as they go through security, but when they are apprehended, they reveal that they are cops. This causes Ryan and Jessica to realize that Ethan and his gang are dirty police officers. Ryan then finds a man that apparently matches Jessica's description of her husband Craig, but this mistake in identity permits the kidnappers to 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. Before they leave, Jessica acts a little fanatical to whisper in secret to Craig that he will have help at the bank. 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 roof alone after failing to take Craig with him. However, he accidentally drops the lawyer's cell phone off the roof, smashing it to pieces. He manages to escape in a taxi-cab, telling the driver to go to the LAPD Auto Impound. In the cab, he checks out the camera. He sees that when Craig was taking some video footage of houses for his realtor job, Craig accidentally shot footage of Los Angeles Police Department Detectives Ethan, Mad Dog, Dimitri, Bayback, Deason, and Jack Tanner, a friend of Mooney, robbing and murdering drug dealers (which is a good thing that Ryan left the police station when he did, as the detective that Mooney was sending him to was in fact Tanner). After getting off at the impound lot and sneaking in while the receptionist is distracted by the lawyer trying to get his car back without paying a fee, Ryan steals the lawyer's car again and gets back his own cellphone, relieved to find that Jessica's call is still on hold.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 causing him to bleed out in seconds. 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 from his friend Chad, 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 with a surfboard, 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 (revealing that Ryan's phone somehow was not water damaged after jumping into the river). The ring of the cell betrays Ethan's hiding place, and Mooney promptly shoots him dead. As Ethan falls, he looks dumbfoundedly at Ryan ... and then at Ryan's cell phone, the "weapon" that got him killed just before passing away.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 Ryan and Mooney 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 jokingly requests for her is never to call him again, and they laugh.

Tags: mystery, murder, violence, action, claustrophobic, suspenseful

Review:
The best part about this movie is that you actually feel sympathy for the victims, the plot is probable, and the action scenes do not require that the actors possess superhuman strength.
A kidnapped woman (Kim Basinger) frantically dials a random number on a broken telephone, reaching the cellular phone of a young man in a different state (Chris Evans) who begins a race against time to find and save her before the connection is lost or she is killed.Cellular is a fast paced, exciting and entertaining movie.
A thriller worth watching for its exhilaratingly fast pace, situational humor, and Chris Evans' star-making performance..
To try and patch things up, he promises to run a few errands for her, but on the way, he receives a call on his cell phone from a stranger named Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), a woman who claims she's been kidnapped and is being held in the attic of an unfamiliar house.
Unfortunately, obstacles to keeping the phone signal going present themselves at every turn, and Ryan finds he must go through some extreme measures to keep Jessica on the line.It's these obstacles that make up at least half the fun of watching Cellular.
Even more troublesome is the climax, which has the unfortunate task of resolving every introduced plot strand, and while the results are still highly entertaining, it comes across a bit messy (though ironically finishing things up on a nice and tidy final note).Still, the story makes a lot of right choices when a lesser movie would have simply veered off course for good.
The movie also satisfyingly chooses to reveal its surprise villain halfway through rather than saving it for a silly last-minute unveiling.The film also boasts a good sense of humor, a lot of it coming from Evans, who handles the comic moments with natural ease (no real surprise, he was also very funny in Not Another Teen Movie).
This film revolves around Jessica(Kim Basinger) she was kidnapped, and she dials a random number which is Ryan's number (Chris Evans) who being coward person , he avoids helping people too .Howeve Ryan will launch in an incredible race against time to save Jessica, as well as he has no idea about what await him.The film was very amusing,exciting and entertaining.
We as Moroccan people we can watch it with our parents, that's means that this movie does no include scenes which are inappropriate, so "Cellular" can be watched by all age categories.Personally I think that this film transmit an important message to boys, especially to careless boys.All in all, I really enjoyed watching this captivating film.
Ellis, however, "Cellular" becomes an unintentionally hilarious cousin to Brian de Palma's "Raising Cain" and "Snake Eyes."Ellis seems to have unwittingly spliced together two different films with mismatched tones: Kim Basinger as the kidnapee and Jason Statham as the kidnapper occupy the deadly-serious, straight-to-video thriller half, while Chris Evans as the rescuer and William H.
Straightforward good cop, bad cop movie plot supporting the central star of a cellular phone.
If you expect substance, this movie is not it -- director Michael Mann's recent film "Collateral" 2004, with Tom Cruise, Jaimie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith, did optimize the cellular phone as part of a substantial plot progression.
It's a timely reflection, or reminder, of how cellular technology is consumingly inhabiting our lives, and here in this breeze of a movie, we have a life saver adventure -- a day in the life of Ryan (Chris Evans), to the rescue of a civilian family from the claws of relentless bad cops (well, nothing so complicated or devastatingly psycho-play as "Training Day," of course).
One would forgive or welcome the convenient plot points that Basinger happens to be a teacher of science/biology handy with wires (harkens the beginning credit of production company name -- "Electric Entertainment," hm), and Macy's soon to retire good cop happens to follow his curiosity instinct, and thank goodness Evan's character turned out to be not so goofy but smarter and thinking by the minute.
This movie proves that Hollywood has too much money and too many incompetent scriptwriters, producers and other people who make such awful bombs.The whole plot of this movie could be ended from the very first minutes at any time by just one phone call to the police.
it has a very disappointing start, middle and end, a terrible cast of basically nobodies, there isn't a single hot guy in this flick to perve on (come on gals, we all know we do, it's like a force of nature to look for a hot guy to perve on in a movie!)not to mention nothing for the guys...but apart from all that, it is still an awful movie!!
Take an episode of 24, remove any believable elements of the plot, replace the cast with actors who really REALLY cannot act (even Basinger is dreadful, more's the pity), sprinkle liberally with clichés and one-liners so bad Arnie would think twice, and you have Cellular.The movie starts with middle-class suburban American (Basinger) putting blonde-haired, blue-eyed all American son on school bus.
The movie has enough action that works to be entertaining for stretches and Kim Basinger does a commendable job with a strangely written role.
This movie was so fake, cheesy, and silly it took me 2 days to watch just 94 minutes of film.Chris Evans is hot and was some nice eye candy to look at but not even he can save this film.
The whole story is centred around the main young guy, who has nothing to offer as far as acting or action skills are concerned.I watched movie on the first day, in accompaniment of teenagers.
When I seen it I just can't explain how much I loved the movie and I knew would of liked it because phone booth is one of my favourite films.
Duhhhhhh.Get this....Basinger's kidnapped character, who must be president of the Extra Slow Talkers Club of America, so sloooooowly states her dire plight on the kidnapper's smashed(but quickly fixed by her!)phone to a dumb kid she happens to get on a cell phone and then she tries to get him to help her get away from her kidnappers, and she doesn't even think to ask him to look at her caller phone number on his cell, and then call the police so it could be traced in minutes to the place she is being held so she can be found!!!
But unlike story-provider Larry Cohen's sort of companion piece "Phone Booth," it's not quite as riveting.It's not the basic situation of Kim Basinger's life depending on her staying in touch with innocent bystander-listener Chris Evans (not that one); it's how it plays out.
Chris Morgan's screenplay also could have done with less absurd roadblocks to get in the way of the suspense rather than enhance it (how convenient is it that a riot should break out in the police station our hero goes to?) and a few less references to the Big Book Of Screen writing Clichés (ever noticed that movie cops on the verge of retirement always have to have something come up on the day they leave the force?).
It's been suggested on one of the forums I visit that "Cellular" is the kind of movie the Board would make if it was real, but it's not quite as imbecilic - it holds the attention and benefits from its cast (Basinger, Evans, Jason Statham, and especially William H.
Jason Stratham, you know from The Punisher & as handsome Rob in the Italian Job, does a great crooked cop role who is holding jessica (kim).Chris Evans is not only handsome but proved himself to be quite the actor as he is the only one who can save Jessica and her family.
I have seen quite a lot of Jason Statham movies and he is one of my favourite actors, somehow I managed to miss this one out and have only just seen it now, 9 years after it was released.I think the plot is fairly simple and easy to follow, the action starts pretty much straight away.
STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All CostsJessica Martin (Kim Basinger) waves goodbye to her son like she would any normal morning.Then,men suddenly burst into her house,kill her maid and kidnap her,holding her in a barn with a phone which the chief villain,Greer (Jason Statham) promptly smashes up.However,she manages to piece it back together again and manages to contact Ryan (Chris Evans) a teenager with a hectic personal life,who becomes embroiled in a desperate battle to save Jessica and her family.Everything happens much too quickly for anything to have any effect and without enough dramatic build-up to the characters,their motivations and their roles.Not only that,Cellular is just full of implausibilities.Just exactly WHY does Jessica end up getting through to Ryan of all people without even apparently phoning a number?Why do the bad guys choose to store Jessica in a run-down,ramshackle barn that oh-so-conveniently manages to have a phone anyway?When the bad guys arrive at Ricky's (Jessica's son) school,why does he just wonder over to a car he isn't familiar with without the bad guys actually grabbing him before he steps a few feet or so (didn't his mother teach him never to approach strangers?!?)When Ryan's in the phone store,why does he just faff around with the other customers and the staff without alerting them to (and given) the urgency of the situation?When Ryan is searching for Craig Martin at the airport,why does he not just ask the guy he grabs and pulls into the mens room if he's him or not ("Is your name Craig Martin?",doesn't take a lot,does it?!?)There are a few more,but I fear they may give away crucial plot details.On the performances front,Evans sort of plays like someone you're just glad isn't Paul Walker,despite being the unfortunate namesake of a certain zany UK TV presenter who's been hitting the papers again lately.But Statham is a really,really poor villain.His character has no bite and no edge,even despite the air of mystery surrounding his abduction of Jessica and her son,and only manages to bite off chunks of mostly really inane dialogue in as forced a manner as possible.In the lead role,you can take or leave Basinger,but the movie benefits from the always reliable William H Macy in a supporting role.Despite it's mountain of flaws,it still manages to inexplicably hook you till the end.But when the novelty's worn off,this ultimately emerges as nothing but a wasted opportunity at something that could have been really fantastic but is instead just a really botched job.**.
After a few humorous quips and put downs ('lets see how FAR this will GO, William' and 'we'll get back to you in, say, 9 1/2 weeks, Kim')the committee decide that this would be the perfect film to revolve entirely around cellular phone technology, and after all there's that guy who writes stories about phones, Ethan?
My main problem, however, that i will share, was the fact that though Basinger's character phoned an apparently entirely random number she managed to get hold of someone who didn't just speak her language, or even just live in her own country, but she contacted someone who was about 5 miles away and who amazingly had nothing else of any significance to do all day besides from run round helping her.In conclusion, though, it wouldn't be fair to concentrate on these quirks, as it has to be said that the movie makers achieved their ends fabulously.
However the first twenty minutes of Cellular proved that not only were all the characters stupid in behavior, the acting was horrible, there were way too many convenient consequences for the character Ryan, and too many unbelievable situations (anyone in southern California will tell you how rare it is to find a parking spot right in front of every building you go to!) Although I didn't watch the entire movie I seriously doubt if it could have morphed into something remotely enjoyable or entertaining in it's last 75 minutes.
The desperate woman reveals herself as a science teacher held hostage in her attic while a bunch of unknown guys have taken over her home and want to kidnap her son and kill her husband; she doesn't know why it's happening except it's on her.Ryan does what he can to make sure the woman is alive while staying on the phone meaning that there's no way he can hang up.
A riot breaks out in the station before the woman could be saved.It's a race against time with Ryan as he goes all over the city like a maniac looking for various cars and various chargers for the phone while encountering many people from a crooked face lawyer to the thugs that want to hurt the family."Cellular" is one great thriller that plays like the film "Speed" where we don't know what's going to happen next.
'Cellular' looks to be one of the latter.Written by old-school TV writer Larry Cohen, this is not his first film where the whole premise of the movie has been based around a telephone conversation.
His previous film 'Phone Booth' (2002: Colin Firth and Keifer Sutherland) was admittedly quite good, however as is inevitably the case with sequels, when something works the first time it is often reproduced at a far inferior rate to that of the original (perhaps this time it has something to do with the absence of Joel Schumacher in the director's chair).The basic plot of the story is that Kim Basinger gets kidnapped and locked in a room while the bad guys are trying to find her husband.
The idea that this young guy goes from taking photos on his phone and having a good time at the beach, to running wild all over LA with a gun, is I think asking a bit much for the audience to believe.
I don't mind suspending reality for a couple of hours, but when something doesn't make sense it takes the focus off the story, which is what a film is supposed to be all about.While I am a big fan of some of the actors in this movie (William H Macy, Jason Statham) I feel that none of the cast were given good enough material for them to be able to create convincing characters and perform at their best.
The characters are never really developed - the hero goes from bored to excited but never takes a pause to think or anticipate; the heroine alternates between terror and misery (yet she shows thought once or twice); the bad guys are adapted wholesale from other stories; and the assistant good guy is disengaged throughout most of the movie, almost as if he realizes what a snoozer this flick is.
A bad story of a guy being called on his cell phone what ruins his day.If you were ever considering seeing this movie, I have one advice.
If i were a bad guy i'd have shot Kim Basinger's character at the start of the film.
As we might expect, kidnap victim Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is descending further and further into desperation but remaining strong the whole time; her contact Ryan (Chris Evans) is overall clueless but has a heart of gold; cop Mooney (William H.
I saw this movie way back in 2004 when it came out on DVD.One of Chris Evans' first major films, co-starring with Kim Basinger, he really shines in this film.
I remember watching 'Cellular' back in 2004 - a film about a woman (Kim Basinger) who gets kidnapped and imprisoned while be tortured by Jason Statham's attempt at an American accent (why didn't they just let him use his native British accent?!).
All these years and I've only just watched it again to find that this 'everyman' just so happened to be Captain America (only without his shield), Chris Evans.'Cellular' does feel like a bit of a 'nineties' action movie (even though it was made in 2004).
Macy is also a great actor to watch, but I couldn't help but think that every aspect of his (police) character had already been done (better) in 'Falling Down' courtesy of Robert Duvall.And yet, despite all these gripes (and more!), I still can't bring myself to coming anywhere near close to hating this film.
Often, cell phones in movies have little to no signal when the plot calls for it, but CELLULAR goes too far in the other direction.
Seriously, with all of the obstacles that Chris Evans' character comes across there's no way that his phone, much less one made in the early 2000's, could have withstood everything that happens in the film.
Let's start with acting.Chris Evans was OK as this kid who gets a cell phone call and decides he's finally going to think about somebody other than himself.
If Ryan (Chris Evans) and Jessica (Kim Basinger) had thought for just one second the way to go about things the movie could have been over in 5 mins.
You have William H Macy, Kim Bassinger, Jason Statham and Chris Evan( most of you r probably thinking he normally does comedy but in this film he can act and be funny at the same time).
I couldn't get that song out of my head, it suited all the action scenes brilliantly and also for the end credits with all the names popping up on cell phones of all the characters.To most people, this film is pretty far fetched but, in another way, it's a message which tells us that bizarre events can happen!
Action at the beginning started very quickly, more like a crime based television series than a film, not giving any time to get to know the main characters or relate or empathise with them in any way.