Brad Anderson’s The Call (2013) Movie Review

The Call follows the story of Jordan Turner a 911 operator working in the Los Angeles area. Jordan receives a call from a young girl that has an intruder trying to break into her house, though Jordan does everything she can the young girl doesn’t make it. After that day Jordan elects to help train at the 911 call center instead of receive calls due to the trauma it cause. Sometime later as Jordan is teaching a group of new recruits a tough call comes in from a young girl who has been thrown in the trunk of a car. Now Jordan must decide how far she is willing to go in order to insure another young woman isn’t lost the same as before.

The movie starts out extremely involving and suspenseful. It’s able to keep it up for a good 40 odd minutes but once it gets to the third act it really starts to drag and turn to more and worse cliches  The movie then moves into a chase to save the girl, a chase that is very thrilling and keeps you at the edge of your sit as you start to wonder how it will all go, this whole excitement meets an anticlimax the moment Halle Berry our protagonist decides to take matters into her own hands. From here the movie starts to look stupid and seemed like a desperate need to make her look more like a true heroine by letting her be the one to take out the bad guy, something that the police should have done.

Halle Berry looks pretty good in this film and did well in all departments. She is at her best in the starting scenes. This film’s eye candy is Abigail Breslin, who plays kidnap victim Casey Welson. She does a decent job as the naive teenager turned kidnap victim. Coming to Psycho Micheal Eklund there is a quick montage of shots which makes a significance. But, the viewer is left to fully understand them. Perhaps the creators felt it wasn’t necessary since Foster’s violence is what people will normally take away from the theater.

The direction of this movie is fine, with some bumpy narrative and some very well-done thrills throughout. The script is shaky at parts, mostly when dealing with the lead character’s personal life and climax scenes.

This film has a wildly intriguing and binding setup. It’s credible, shocking, electrifying, and acute. The makers lose all sense of realism, venture into disturbance instead of drama, and drop the jar with what is possibly one of the worst endings in recent times. This lousy last 30 minutes cannot completely undo the grace built up by the first hour.

Theatrical Trailer: