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List Price: $24.95 | | Label: Virgil Films and Entertainment
Salesrank: 67835
Released: April 14, 2009 |
| Our Price: $5.24 |
| Used Price: $2.09 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
STARRING 2009 ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE® FRANK LANGELLA (BEST ACTOR, FROST/NIXON) Jimmy Stevens (FRANK LANGELLA), a senior VP for E.N. Corporation, sets up his own assassination after sending a damaging but anonymous email with deflated sales figures for his company and attaching a video-clip containing sinister images of a clandestine burial at the energy firm's factory in Latin America. In New York the wheels of the corporation spin into action using contacts, Teddy and Sammy, from the underground to track down the whistleblower. Jimmy fears for his life, and, using the pseudonym John Doe , hires Frank Turlotte (ELLIOTT GOULD), a private detective, to follow a man and track his movements. Disguising his voice, Jimmy does not tell Turlotte that the person who has hired him, and the man he is to trail are one and the same. Increasingly obsessed with Turlotte's opinion of his life, Jimmy engages in a game of cat and mouse, phoning Turlotte each evening for a report, and taunting him into discovering more and more details of his life. Jimmy eventually tells Turlotte that his job is over except for one more meeting in Redhook, Brooklyn. Turlotte is now intrigued enough to get to know Eileen (LAURA HARRING), a jazz singer and Jimmy's companion, and her seven-year-old daughter, Lila. Jimmy tells Lila a story about his childhood in 1940s France: One day towards the end of the war, Jimmy and his friend Lulu found a dying soldier in the woods. The soldier had requested that Lulu stay with him until his death. It was an episode that has haunted Jimmy ever since, and initiated his greatest wish, that he should not die alone.
The Caller Reviews:
The art of memory! 
2009-05-21 - Powerfully intense, artistically original, organically dramatic and lyrically tragic are some of the most conspicuous profiles of this singular film.
A troubled man who has been emotionally wounded by the crimes of the war, decides by himself to hire "a private eye" in order to investigate himself to carve in relief the unsaid levels of corruption around the company he works.
The use of "Nosferatu" as visual metaphor of the predation in progress or the projection during five seconds of "Paths of glory" when the destiny of the soldiers have been made are brilliant metaphors that accent the tragedy of this isolated man who loves a jazz singer becoming her a sophisticated lady (in honor to George Gershwin) seeks comfort around the simple friendship of a little child. Unable to make a crude statement he gives the main clues to all of those who surround him to try to show the rottenness through "a discrete make up process" about the real situation and the sending of a devastating video clip in South America, demolishing unquestionable.
A mature existential drama that overpasses by far the anecdote by itself. As it's usual Frank Langella gives us a towering performance as well as Elliot Gould in this intimate human portrait.
Don't miss it by any reason.
Some people are easily entertained 
2009-05-13 - From what I have read here in the other reviews is becomes clear that some people are easily entertained...This film is just the thing for those of you whose idea of an exciting outing consists of watching the grass grow or watching the mail being delivered..The plot has holes in it the size of the entrances to the Lincoln tunnel,the acting is just OK,and the alledged"lessons" learned from this awful film are obvious and should be as familiar to us as looking both ways before crossing the street,or not plugging in the electric toaster while standing in a tub of water...
The plot,such as it is,has already been outlined several times here so I won't bother about doing it again...I will,however,say that in my opinion this is the sort of film that actors and actresses do because they need to pay the bills until something better comes along..Further,there is a reason why this film never played at your local cinema palace,and that reason is that the exhibitors themselves previewed it beforehand and knew that it would never,under any circumstance,sell enough tickets to pay for itself...
You have been warned...
The performances were enough to carry it, but it was still pretty thin 
2009-05-03 - Short Attention Span Summary:
1. A man is shown dealing in some business deals that smack of illegality.
2. Later he falsifies some reports knowing that they will lead to his being executed.
3. The hit man that is to execute him gives him a call on the phone and he asks for a delay of two weeks (lest information be given that incriminates the company for which the businessman worked).
4. The businessman hires a detective to follow him-- but the detective does not know that it was actually the businessman who hired him.
5. We see snippets of the businessman's life and find out that he was survivor of WWII and he hired the detective so that he would not have to be alone when he died.
6. The businessman is eventually summarily executed (and does not die alone).
This really stretched the plausibility test. The acting was very good and very serious/ sober. But if someone wanted to die, and he wanted someone with him when he died, couldn't he have found some other way from among his many contacts so to do?
There was also the issue of his mother. Was she sane or wasn't she? Could there really be a human being that old on the planet (she would have to have been nearing 105 for the things in the movie to make sense)? And what was going on with her accent? At one time, she had a German accent. At another time, she had an American accent. And then still another time, she had a French accent.
This is worth a rental price-- but not a theater ticket.
A nice, overlooked film 
2009-04-26 - The Caller has a European feel to it in that it explores the little things in detail while leaving some big things unsaid. Its not a complicated story, nor is it the non-stop action film portrayed in the trailer but its distinctive and entertaining. Frank Langella is on the money. Four stars because Elliot Gould says his lines in such a way that you expect his eyeballs to move from side to side.
Tears and resolve
2009-04-14 - This is the kind of film that you convince yourself you are just going to have on in the background while you do something else, until you slowly come the realization that you have absorbed every detail, heard every word, lived every moment, shared every note of the score ... with them. What began as cold and detached, has become warm, righteous and has taught you a lesson about how you want to live and the importance of the people in your life. Simple, bittersweet, truth.
