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2 stars (out of 4)

Sorry, "Cellular" is a wrong number.

Speeding away from its distant origins as a very promising story idea about cell phones and kidnappings to its screaming realization as another outlandishly cliched L.A.-set movie thriller--high on action, low on sense--"Cellular" is a model of how big movies go wrong.

"Cellular" is a movie thriller for our own cell phone era, but it's the wrong movie. Slickly produced, well cast and very excitingly made, it's based on plot hooks so silly, most of them blow up in your face. The actors and technicians may be giving their all, trying to pump believability into "Cellular's" tank, but it's as futile as trying to make calls on a battery-dead phone.

The premise isn't bad and neither are the actors. Terrified housewife Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped by sadistic crook Ethan (Jason Statham) and his drug thugs and locked in an attic. Frantic about the gang's threats to her husband, Craig (Richard Burgi), and young son Ricky (Adam Taylor), Jessica hot-wires a smashed phone and establishes a fragile link with the cell phone of happy-go-lucky college guy Ryan (Chris Evans), cruising the streets from the Santa Monica pier on an errand from his angry girlfriend.

Gradually, Jessica breaks through Ryan's skepticism and enlists him in a struggle to tell the cops, warn Craig and Ricky and foil the bad guys. For the rest of "Cellular," we're treated to the spectacle of the now hero-ized Ryan, crashing and smashing through innumerable hair-raisers--including improvised armed robberies, wrong-way freeway drives and a final shootout back at the pier--while eluding or battling an increasingly large and intimidating array of villains. His only real ally: aging, sad-eyed LAPD desk cop Mooney (William H. Macy), who smells a rat and soon has a few waving guns at him.

Within five minutes, the original premise may have you hooked. But within 20 or so, shortly after Ryan locks horns with an arrogant lawyer (Rick Hoffman), whose cell phone crosses wires with his, the movie flies off the rails into high-octane absurdity.

"Cellular's" David R. Ellis, an action director who recently graduated to full features ("Final Destination 2"), keeps the move ripping along--and I suppose we should thank him for keeping up the pace. If he lingered very long on these plot twists, they might be unbearable. The only way "Cellular" works is as an action comedy; unfortunately, when the movie tries for real humor, as it does with that obnoxious attorney (his vanity license plate reads "I WL SU YU 2"), it mostly goes coy and crude.

The movie's script is credited to newcomer Chris Morgan and the story to savvy old pro Larry Cohen ("Phone Booth"), whom we can probably thank for the nifty premise. I doubt Cohen would want to share the blame for the movie's chain of howlers--which we'll keep secret on the theory that even bad movie surprises deserve some chance to work on their audiences.

This script, like many others these days, has only one real narrative principle: Cut to the chase. But if you keep cutting from one chase to the next, it's tough to care who's running or why. In the movie, Evans' Ryan goes too fast from joker to hero, from disengaged party guy to madcap risker of life and limb. Shouldn't he have some bigger motivation for his sudden switch--like, say, a photo of Basinger?

Basinger, who hasn't parlayed her "L.A. Confidential" Oscar into enough good follow-up roles, has another weak one here. But somehow she invests Jessica with enough passion to carry us through the action. Basinger, Macy, Staham (the glowering tough guy of Guy Ritchie's films)--and even, at times, Evans--give this movie better acting than it deserves.

Thrillers don't have to be 100 percent plausible, as Alfred Hitchcock often patiently explained. But they do have to parse on some level. The only way to really enjoy it, after the first 20 minutes or so, is to keep your logic disconnected.

"Cellular"

Directed by David R. Ellis; written by Chris Morgan, from a story by Larry Cohen; photographed by Gary Capo; edited by Eric Sears; production designed by Jaymes Hinkle; music by John Ottman; produced by Dean Devlin, Lauren Lloyd. A New Line Cinema release of an Electric Entertainment production; opens Friday. Running time: 1:32. MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence, terror situations, language and sexual references).

Jessica Martin - Kim Basinger
Ryan - Chris Evans
Ethan - Jason Statham
Mooney - William H. Macy
Chad - Eric Christian Olsen
Deason - Matt McColm

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