Rated R
Running time: 94 Minutes
Click below to watch The Call trailer.
In TriStar Pictures The Call, 911 operator Halle Berry receives a call from kidnapping victim Abigail Breslin and must find her.
In this high concept thriller, Berry works in a 911 emergency dispatch center - otherwise known among themselves as "The Hive" - dealing with various 911 calls, from the mundane to the intense. After making a mistake during an intense home intrusion call with teenaged victim Evie Thompson - a distraught Berry gives up fielding calls and becomes a 911 trainer, giving a jaded view of what being a 911 dispatcher is like to her students. In the middle of the training, rookie operator Jenna Lamia gets a kidnapping call from Breslin - and is too overwhelmed and can not handle the call. Berry takes over the call, doing everything she can to help Breslin - who is locked in the trunk of a car.
After listening to the voice overs of the 911 calls at the beginning of the movie, I liked going behind the scenes of a 911 public-safety answering point (PSAP). I do not recall seeing this much detail with the 911 system before. These are real people dealing with intense situations, thus the necessity of a quiet room to decompress and the availability of psychiatric help if they need it. Berry herself was a wreck while during her research in watching them and said that she could never do this job. Berry having the support from 911 supervisor Roma Maffia in the movie was nice. I never realized that the not knowing of the results at the end of a call would weigh on an operator's mind - but when I think about it, not knowing would weigh on my mind as well.
What I did not like was that the movie went from an intense police procedural with the 911 and police resources - into a Hollywood thriller along the lines of the TV series Profiler during the last act of the movie. While by itself, the last act was good as a thriller and I was pulling for them, it was disappointing to watch stylistically after watching the technical aspects of the rest of the movie. I liked the idea of Berry using the resources of 911 - with the computer programs and communications with the first responders, like police officer Morris Chestnut - and wish that the movie would have taken the 911 resources to the ultimate level. Considering how ingrained cell phones are with people, especially with teenagers, this movie shows the much more important role that phones have in our society.
The manhunt for kidnapper Michael Eklund reminded me of the recent manhunt for former LAPD officer turned killer Christopher Dorner. The movie also reminds me that police officers are people with lives of their own too, especially with the relationship between Chestnut and Berry.
Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 94 Minutes.
Pancho
All people smile in the same language.
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