Cellular - Dated good fun

I remember watching 'Cellular' back in 2004 - a film about a woman (Kim Basinger) who gets kidnapped and imprisoned while be tortured by Jason Statham's attempt at an American accent (why didn't they just let him use his native British accent?!).  However, she manages to repair an old phone and contact a random guy on the street via his cell phone and persuade him to help her escape.  All these years and I've only just watched it again to find that this 'everyman' just so happened to be Captain America (only without his shield), Chris Evans.

'Cellular' does feel like a bit of a 'nineties' action movie (even though it was made in 2004).  I know we live in a world where film companies desperately want to push their 'shared universes' and I could really see the events of 'Cellular' all happening somewhere alongside those in other nineties classics like 'The Rock, Speed' and 'Con Air.' 'Cellular' is a bit of a 'guilty pleasure' film of mine.  It certainly doesn't take an awful lot of brainpower to sit through and, if you really want to be harsh, you can probably spend the entire runtime pulling it apart in terms of plot holes and how you would have done things massively differently to those you're watching on screen. 

I've already touched upon Jason Statham's accent.  Despite me owning almost every over-the-top action film he's ever been in, I have to say that his natural British accent suits him the best and he should just stick to that.  Kim Basinger is a very accomplished actress and yet she's little more than a prolonged damsel in distress here.  Yes, I know she does what she can to get out of her situation, but she's hardly going to be striking too many blows for women's rights with this performance.  Chris Evans, again, has shown that he's more than just a man frozen in time and capable of throwing a shield about.  Only, he doesn't do that here.  Here he's just a 'generic good looking action' guy.  William H. Macy is also a great actor to watch, but I couldn't help but think that every aspect of his (police) character had already been done (better) in 'Falling Down' courtesy of Robert Duvall.

And yet, despite all these gripes (and more!), I still can't bring myself to coming anywhere near close to hating this film.  I simply put my brain on hold and enjoy it for what it is.  Despite only being made in 2004, it's already showing its age.  It came from a world where cell phones still didn't quite have the 'hold' they currently have over our lives and using one as a major plot point in a film was actually quite new.  I know that today Basinger would probably just have tweeted something like #ivebeenkidnapped and then made a string of vlogs for her YouTube audience, but, if you can take yourself back to a world before social media and when having a cell phone was actually something quite out of the ordinary, you should enjoy this for a simple and fun action tale.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one