Director : David R. Ellis Starring : Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, William H. Macy Trailer for Cellular Videodetective (Windows Media 28-300k) (videodetective.com) Moviecentre.net - Various Trailers (www.moviecentre.net)

Your first indication that Cellular is going to be a thoroughly fun, thoroughly trashy B-movie is within the first five minutes, when Kim Basinger shows up in a tight black dress with fishnet stockings, walking her 11 year-old son to the bus. Some parent-child banter ensues, culminating in the question, "Mom, what's going to happen if you become a science teacher at my school?" Kim Basinger is a science teacher? In fishnet stockings?! Oh man, is this gonna be good!

Stupid yet strangely appealing and a guilty pleasure if there ever was one, Cellular is the kind of dumb movie that makes you laugh with it, as opposed to at it. Possessed of a great, self-deflating sense of humor, the movie knowingly pokes fun at all of its absurdist plot twists while keeping a relatively high energy level and investing its characters with a modicum of sympathy. Rather than make fun of Basinger, you're egged on to encourage her beleaguered heroine, a woman who's suddenly kidnapped for no reason she can ascertain. When five burly guys, led by fiercesome baddie Jason Statham, break into her Brentwood home and shoot her housekeeper, the Oscar-winning actress does her standard shrilly-scream thing (which you may remember from her turn as Vicki Vale in Batman over ten years ago) and flails about her blonde hair helplessly. Once, however, she's locked in the most spacious attic you'd ever find, her Jessica Martin turns resourceful, assessing her surroundings and reassembling the broken pieces of a phone. Not only does she get it to work, she's able to tap out a phone number using two wires. Bet those kidnappers hadn't counted on abducting Mrs. Wizard!

The number that she randomly taps out belongs to a hunky, slacker twentysomething named Ryan (Chris Evans). When we first meet Ryan, he's strolling about Santa Monica pier with one of his buds, shirtless and showing off his buff bod and tattoos because… well, because he can, apparently. In our introductory scenes to the surfer guy (he must surf, he has boards in the back of his jeep!), he spars with his pal, chats up his impatient ex (Jessica Biel in a toss-off cameo) and weasels out of a favor she asks of him, but all the while the camera is focused on his lean torso; this is one movie in which someone else's chest is more exploited than Kim Basinger's. Once he finally puts a shirt on, Ryan hops into his jeep, answers his ringing cell phone, and begins a conversation with Jessica that will last throughout most of the movie. He's dubious at her kidnapping claims, but upon overhearing Statham threaten her (man, that is some great connection—get that provider's name!) is convinced she's the real deal. And thus a Good Samaritan is born.

Logic is not a friend to the makers of Cellular, nor even a passing acquaintance, as Jessica begs and begs Ryan not to hang up for fear he won't be able to reconnect with her (never mind that every cell phone has a redial feature). In another masterstroke, Ryan decides to actually go to a police station to put her in contact with a real life officer (never mind that he could find another phone and call 911). However, the lack of mental coherence, or rather its workaround (everything in this movie actually does make sense at some point, but in the most convoluted way possible), translates into a keen sense of fun, as it puts strange yet suspenseful limits on Ryan's actions. In a series of set pieces, Ryan is sent from one chase to another as he tries to beat the kidnappers to Jessica's son, then her husband, and then tries to get away from the kidnappers once he has the movie's MacGuffin in his sweaty hands. The fact that this movie actually has a MacGuffin, one that's revealed about halfway through the movie, is more than enough reason to give its absurd logic a pass.

Another reason to give Cellular a second look is the presence of the ever-reliable, ever-professional William H. Macy, doing way more than just phoning it in as the police officer Ryan first encounters at the station. Distracted by a gang scuffle, he sends Ryan to head upstairs (but static on the line prevents Ryan from heading anywhere, for fear of losing the connection), but gets drawn back into the mystery by bits and pieces. Macy, always an agile and personable actor, immediately gets the audience on his side and easily picks up on the movie's sense of humor; his running gag is the ribbing he gets about his retirement project, what the cops call a beauty shop and what he wearily reminds them is "a day spa!" (It's the movie's second best joke, after the one where Ryan realizes the import of the fact that Jessica Martin's son is named Ricky.) Director David R. Ellis, who played it fairly straight with the equally absurdist sequel Final Destination 2 – containing one of the best bad movie lines of all time, "You've caused a rift in death's design!" – here is able to play fast and loose with the impossible plot dynamics and have a little fun with it. This movie's Los Angeles is a funnier, sunnier flip side to Collateral's, though in some ways just as dangerous; in Cellular's world, Tom Cruise's gray flattop would be a punchline, not a symbol.

Despite all the fun and games, though, Cellular really isn't one for the ages. I'd be loath to recommend that you actually pay to go and see it, but as the kind of movie you'd come across while fighting insomnia, it's worth a look, and will hook you up until the end, which finds its way back to Santa Monica pier and gets a little too serious for its own good. And its nice, charismatic cast will more than smooth over any bumps. Statham, kind of a requisite thug these days, gives his lunky bad guy a glimmer of conscience behind his stone-like face. Evans, half of whose lines seem to consist of "Oh shit! Oh shit!", is a passable hero-type, and while this certainly isn't a star-making performance, it's good enough to get him his own WB show if he wants it. The nicest surprise is Basinger, whose attic-locked role brings to mind Barbara Stanwyck in another phone-based thriller, Sorry, Wrong Number. More confident and smarter than she was in the 80s, she gives Cellular a kind of class even while she's begging for her life on half a phone or taking out thugs twice her size. In the past, she would have dragged a thriller like this down with her; these days, though, she easily rises above it.