This is one of those ideas that, on paper, feels like the
worst possible fit for a visual medium. It’s the story of a Copenhagen
policeman who is on desk duty and manning the phone line. For the entirety of
the film’s run time, we never leave his side; the majority of the other
characters and pretty much all of the narrative is given to us through
dialogue, with only background noises during the phone calls giving us a
‘picture’ of what’s going on. This isn’t the first time this has been attempted,
but when your contemporaries include The Call with Halle Berry, the capacity
for mediocrity is quite high. And yet, even with the lack of visual detail,
this works really damn well. Namely, because it highlights what else goes into
the cinematic process besides the visuals.
