Does exactly what it says on the tin

The Call (15)
Running time 94 minutes
Rating:***
Unlike many Hollywood films stuffed full of big characters, big noises and big special effects, everything about The Call is lean and mean.
With the average Hollywood movie costing about $60 million these days, The Call, at a mere $13 million, is on the tiddler side of film budgets.
Still, despite the lack of what they call production values (ie lots of stuff that justify the blockbuster label) – or perhaps because of it – The Call does exactly what it says on the tin, and does it well.
The story, originally imagined as a television series, has been condensed into a 94-minute single feature film, which is what it should be. Halle Berry, of X-Men and Catwoman fame, plays Jordan Turner, a veteran 911 emergency phone operator who receives a panic-laden call from a teenager being kidnapped from her house by a serial killer.
Jordan stays on the line, but the teenager is killed, leaving the operator distraught and unable to continue taking emergency calls.
Later, in her new role as 911 training instructor, she helps another operator who is taking an identical type of call from another kidnapped teenager.
The call continues as the killer – played by Michael Eglund with much clicking of teeth and unrestrained violence – transports the captive across the country to his secret lair where he does terrible things to his captives in order to feed a sexual fantasy.
There are no great special effects, elaborate sets, or indeed anything that takes your mind off what is a well-constructed, tension-laden thriller. In fact, it’s exactly the type of spare and elegant movie that film-makers in the UK are good at making for comparatively small amounts of money.
The acting is restrained, the photography unobtrusive yet effective, and the all-important storyline neat and well constructed, all helped by the brisk pace maintained by director Brad Anderson (The Machinist).
Even the ending, which may well delight some feminist film-goers of a tougher turn of mind, fits nicely into the thread of a good crime thriller which has a nasty villain, an even nastier crime, supported by imaginative crime chasers on the trail of clues.
The Call is not a film likely to engender great excitement, but is one to watch, enjoy and realise that you don’t need all the movie-making bells and whistles to tell a good story, you just need the basic essentials of character, setting, conflict and resolution.