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THE CALLER Send This Review to a Friend
Even the presence of such stalwarts as Frank Langella and Elliott Gould cannot save “The Caller,” a mess of a movie directed by Richard Ledes, who also wrote the screenplay based on a story by Alain Didier-Weill. The film is pretentious from the outset, and doesn’t let up in its overblown style and its unconvincing story.
Langella gravely plays a man who has become a whistleblower against a company that has been up to no good in Latin America. Its nefarious activities have included the elimination of opponents, a situation that bears investigation and punishment and bodes ill for a whistleblower.
Jimmy Stevens (Langella) knows that his days are numbered. Maintaining secrecy, Jimmy hires a detective in New York—one Frank Turlotte, played by Gould, to follow him. Turlotte doesn’t know he is tailing his employer. This adds a note of mystery, but not one of sense.
Underlying is an earlier tale, referred to periodically in flashbacks, of two boys caught in the violence in World War II France. Are they meant to be Stevens and Turlotte as kids?
This adds to the murkiness of “The Caller,” but frankly, although watching Langella and Gould has its compensations, any enigma in which the film is wrapped isn’t worth pondering. A Belladonna Productions release.
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