The Call

After winning her Oscar, Halle Berry has made some of the worst career choices she could possibly make. In everything from Catwoman to Movie 43, she proved that she could just as easily win a Razzie as well as an Oscar. Now, hoping to regain A-list status, she agrees to star in The Call. This intense drama is made from the point of view of a 911 operative, and focuses on a case where a girl was kidnapped and stuffed into the trunk of a car. Strangely enough, the kidnapper doesn't take her cell phone, and she manages to call 911. Over the course of the movie, Halle Berry and the cops attempt to locate her while trying to discover who exactly is behind this heinous crime. So is it any good? Not really. I mean, it starts off rather well. The director was able to keep tension, and there was some interesting insight into how 911 operators work. Some of the writing was a bit cheesy, but nothing too bad. The first two thirds or so were decent, and Halle Berry was surprisingly good. Nothing Oscar-worthy, and she definitely has a lot of work ahead of her if she wants to become an A-lister again, but she has started the climb up toward to redemption. I must also commend Michael Ekland who did very well as the kidnapper. The script does not give him a lot to work from, and he did very well with what he had to work with. However, the movie greatly suffers towards the end. When the conclusion starts approaching, the film blatantly rips off the last scenes in the serial killer's house from The Silence of the Lambs, which doesn't make any sense in this movie. In Silence, Clarice was an FBI agent, so of course she would go investigate by herself. But in this movie, Berry is a 911 operative, someone who would not go around investigating. And the ending was complete bullshit. The Call is mostly a decent thriller, but has a shitty third act and some bad writing. The Call gets a...

5.5/10