Phone Booth (film) - Plot

Plot

Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell) is an arrogant and cocky married New York City publicist who has been seeing a woman named Pam (Katie Holmes) behind his wife Kelly's (Radha Mitchell) back. He uses the last remaining public phone booth in the city to contact Pam. During the call, he is interrupted by a pizza delivery man, who attempts to deliver a free pizza to him, but Stu turns him away. As soon as Stu completes his call to Pam, the phone rings. Stu answers, to find that the caller, who knows his name, warns him not to leave the booth, and says he will say hello to Pam for him. He also says he will call Kelly, leaving Stu panicked.

The caller tells Stu that he has tested two previous individuals who have done wrong deeds in a similar manner (one was a pedophile, the other was a company insider who cashed out his stock options before the share price collapsed), giving each a chance to reveal the truth to those they wronged, but in both cases, neither agreed and were killed. To demonstrate the threat, the caller fires a silenced sniper rifle at a toy sold by a nearby vendor; the damage is unseen by anyone but Stu and the caller himself. The caller demands that Stu confess his infidelity to both Kelly and Pam to avoid being killed. The caller contacts Pam, and puts her on line with Stu, who reveals that he is married. The caller then hangs up, telling Stu to call Kelly himself.

As Stu hesitates, the booth is approached by three prostitutes demanding to use the phone. Stu refuses to leave, having been warned by the caller not to make a public disturbance. Leon (John Enos III), the prostitutes' pimp, joins his charges, smashes the side of the booth, grabs at Stu in a headlock and starts punching him. The caller offers Stu to "make him stop" and asks if he can hear him, which Stu just answers yes causing the caller to misunderstand Stu that he wants him to shoot Leon. The caller does and Leon wanders away before collapsing dead in the street. The prostitutes immediately blame Stu, making a scence over Leons body, accusing him of having a gun even though there isn't a gun in his hand and the police and newscrews converge on the location.

Police Captain Ed Ramey (Forest Whitaker), already suspecting Stu of being the killer, corners the streets with police roadblocks and starts trying to negotiate with him to leave the booth, but Stu rejects, telling the caller that there is no way they can incriminate him; the caller proves him wrong, pointing to a handgun that was planted in the roof of the phone booth. Both Kelly and Pam soon arrive on the scene. The caller demands Stu tell Kelly the truth, which he does. The caller then orders Stu to choose between Kelly and Pam, and the woman he does not choose will be killed.

While on the phone with the caller, Stu secretly uses his cell phone to call Kelly, allowing her to overhear his conversation with the caller. She, in turn, quietly informs Captain Ramey of this. Meanwhile, Stu continues to confess to everyone that his whole life is a lie, to make himself look more important than he really is. Stu's confession provides sufficient distraction to allow the police to trace the payphone call to a nearby building, and Ramey uses coded messages to inform Stu of this. Stu warns the caller that the police are on the way, and the caller replies that if he is caught, then he will kill Kelly. Panicked, Stu grabs the handgun and leaves the booth, screaming for the sniper to kill him instead of Kelly or Pam. The police fire upon Stu, while a smaller force breaks into the room that the caller was tracked to, only to find the gun and a man's corpse.

Stu regains consciousness to find the police only fired rubber bullets at him, stunning but not harming him. Stu and Kelly happily reunite. As the police bring down the body, Stu identifies it as the pizza delivery man from earlier. Stu gets medical treatment at a local ambulance; as he does, a man with a briefcase (Kiefer Sutherland) passes by and says that he regrets killing the pizza deliverer and warns Stu that if his newfound honesty does not last, he will be hearing from him again. The man disappears into the crowd before Stu realizes he was the caller on the other end of the phone.