The Call - don't hang up!

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Movie
German title The Call - don't hang up!
Original title The call
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2013
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 16
Rod
Director Brad Anderson
script Richard D'Ovidio
production Bradley Gallo,
Jeffrey Graup,
Michael A. Helfant,
Michael J. Luisi,
Robert Stein
music John Debney
camera Tom Yatsko
cut Avi Youabian
occupation
synchronization

The Call - don't hang up! (Original title The Call ) is an American thriller directed by Brad Anderson from 2013 . It's about the rescue of a girl who was kidnapped in a car. The film received mixed reviews.

action

The telephone operator Jordan Turner works in the emergency -Central the police of Los Angeles . She gets a call from Leah Templeton, a girl whose parents are away and whose house is being broken into at the time of the call. Jordan calms Leah down and gives her instructions. When Leah and Jordan suddenly lose their connection, Jordan tries to call back. The intruder hears the phone ringing and finds Leah under the bed. The next day, the girl is found dead in another location. Jordan feels guilty and suffers trauma .

Six months later, Jordan is working as a trainer in the emergency call center and is showing a group of new operators around when another, young and still inexperienced operator receives a call from a kidnapped girl. The girl, Casey Welson, is in a panic and the young operator cannot handle the situation properly. Jordan manages to take the call despite her trauma. She manages to calm Casey, who has been kidnapped in the garage of a mall and is in the trunk of a moving car. Since the girl's prepaid cell phone does not send GPS signals, Jordan and Casey develop strategies to identify the car. Casey steps out a taillight and waves through the resulting hole. A woman becomes attentive and reports to the emergency call center. When she tries to get closer to the driver of the car in order to be able to give a description of the perpetrator, the perpetrator notices this, however, gives full throttle and drives away; the woman can still give the license plate number of the car, which turns out to be stolen.

The perpetrator drives through the city by car. Casey is instructed by Jordan to pour paint she found in the trunk out of the hole to make a trail. Another driver notices this and points this out to the kidnapper. Both cars stop in a parking lot next to the freeway . The driver of the second car becomes suspicious and dials the emergency number in his car. His call is being answered when the perpetrator smashes the window and knocks the man unconscious with a shovel. Then he puts Casey in the trunk of his car with the supposedly dead man. Then the kidnapper drives with Casey and the unknown man towards his destination in the Santa Clarita Hills. When the man wakes up from his faint and begins to scream hysterically, the kidnapper stops the car in a remote place and stabs the man in the trunk with a screwdriver.

A short time later, the perpetrator almost runs out of fuel and has to stop at a gas station. Casey manages to get the attendant's attention. The kidnapper notices this, pours gasoline over the gas station attendant and sets him on fire. The investigators manage at the same time to secure fingerprints near the abandoned car, which are on the broken pieces of a bottle with a narcotic drug. This allows you to identify the medical assistant Michael Foster as the kidnapper and write it up for a manhunt. As they look around the kidnapper's house, a photo on the wall tells them of the family's holiday home, which his unsuspecting wife says Foster is renovating.

In the meantime, the kidnapper has arrived near his destination in the Santa Clarita Hills and lifts the begging Casey out of the trunk of the car. He found the cell phone in the girl's pocket and saw that a conversation had been going on there for around 90 minutes. He holds the phone to his ear. When Jordan asks Michael not to do anything to Casey, Michael replies with the sentence "I already have that" and hangs up. Because of this sentence, Jordan realizes that Michael Foster is the man who killed Leah Templeton.

After work, Jordan drives to Foster's holiday home, which the officers searched unsuccessfully a few hours earlier. A few meters away, she hears a rattling flagpole and remembers a corresponding noise in the recording of the emergency call. She discovers a camouflaged floor hatch that leads to Foster's secret underground rooms. Foster collected several scalps of blonde women there, which remind him of his sister who died of cancer. He is just beginning to sever the scalp of the slightly sedated Casey when Jordan knocks him out with a wig stand and frees Casey. After regaining consciousness, he tries to drown Jordan, but Casey cuts his face with a knife. The two women manage to get to the exit. Once at the top, Casey rams a pair of scissors in the back of her tormentor, who was following them, and Jordan kicks him back into the pit. A little later he is tied to the operating chair. The women make it clear to him that they will leave him there, and to his protest “You mustn't do that!” Jordan reacts with the kidnapper's well-known sentence: “I've already got that.” After leaving the underground rooms - in the last scene of the film - Jordan dials the emergency number on her cell phone.

Cast and dubbing

The film was dubbed twice in German . The first synchronization was done in 2013 at TaurusMedia Synchron GmbH in Munich, the second synchronization in 2017 at SDI Media Germany GmbH in Berlin. The author of the dialogue book for the 2nd Synchro was Boris Tessmann , who also directed the dialogue .

role actor 1. Synchro 2. Synchro
Jordan Turner Halle Berry Melanie Pukass Melanie Pukass
Casey Welson Abigail Breslin Friedel Morgenstern Jodie Blank
Officer Paul Phillips Morris Chestnut Ole Pfennig Tobias Kluckert
Michael Foster, kidnapper Michael Eklund Alexander Brem Boris Tessmann
Alan Denado, driver of the black car Michael Imperioli Claus-Peter Damitz Jaron Lowenberg
Officer Jake Devans David Otunga Torben Liebrecht NN
Maddy, Turner's manager Roma Maffia Bettina Redlich Arianne Borbach
Flora, an older colleague at Turner Denise Dowse Joseline Gassen Peggy Sander

background

Initially, Joel Schumacher was scheduled to direct this film. When Brad Anderson took over the direction, leading actress Halle Berry was initially unavailable but later returned.

The film was shot in Los Angeles and Santa Clarita . One such building in Burbank served as the backdrop for the mall where Casey is kidnapped .

In the USA, the premiere took place on March 15, 2013. The film was first shown in Germany on July 11, 2013. The cost of production is estimated at $ 13 million. On the opening weekend, the film grossed over $ 17 million in the United States. The total worldwide revenue is more than $ 68 million.

Reviews

The film received rather poor reviews from professional film critics. Currently (August 3, 2014) Rotten Tomatoes has a 43 percent rating in 125 reviews. If less than 60% of all reviews are positive, a film is considered “rotten”.

The lexicon of international films judged the film to be a “solid thriller”, “which, despite weaknesses in the character drawing, proves to be an exciting genre cinema”.

The reviewer from critic.de praises the reduced, conventional methods, on which the director should have concentrated even more: “The film works in a very effective way precisely because of its reduced means. Sometimes a flashing cell phone battery is enough to turn the voltage screw further, or the tricky efforts to attract the attention of other drivers on the highway. If, on the other hand, The Call tries to be more than classic and, for example, wants to create stylized images of fear with wide-angled close-ups, it has far less effect than the conventionally staged parallel montages between the two women. "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for The Call - Don't hang up! Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , April 2013 (PDF; test number: 138 475 K).
  2. Age rating for The Call - Don't hang up! Youth Media Commission .
  3. ^ Synchro database : The Call (1st Synchro). In: German synchronous card index . Retrieved January 7, 2020 .
  4. ^ Synchro database : The Call (2nd synchro). In: German synchronous card index. Retrieved January 7, 2020 .
  5. Trivia. In: Internet Movie Database . Accessed January 7, 2020 (English).
  6. locations. In: Internet Movie Database. Accessed January 7, 2020 (English).
  7. a b Release Info. In: Internet Movie Database. Accessed January 7, 2020 (English).
  8. a b c Box office / business ( Memento from March 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (English).
  9. The Call - Don't hang up! at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  10. The Call - Don't hang up! in the lexicon of international filmTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used
  11. Michael Kienzl: The Call - Don't hang up! In: critic.de. June 6, 2013, accessed January 8, 2020 .
  12. ^ Halle Berry nominated for BET Award for "The Call". In: wwe.com . June 11, 2013, accessed January 7, 2020 .
  13. ^ Halle Berry: Teen Choice Awards Nominee for 'The Call' ( Memento from February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (English).