The guys outnumber the girls as they play cat and mouse in a very big house.
Directed by - David Fincher
Starring - Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam, Jared Leto, Patrick Bauchau, Ann Magnuson, Ian Buchanan
Length - 112 minutes
After the captivatingly quick opening credits Panic Room gets right down to business as we see the recently divorced Meg Altman (Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Stewart) making use of the money gained from a divorce by searching Manhattan for a new home. They decide to move into a nice huge mansion that was previously owned by a paranoid millionaire. Paranoid because the owner had installed a ’panic room’, this being a safe room where you can hide from bad people. The walls of the room are made of several tons of concrete while a foot of thick steel represents the door, stopping anyone from breaking in. The room is also a tool for Sony to blatantly promote their phone, which isn’t connected via the main line, their eight monitors to see what goes on in every room of the house and their VCR’s should you want to record the action. The room is a nice bonus and something that proves useful as they spend their first night in their new house. After three intruders break in both mother and daughter rush straight to the Sony haven. They watch the trio of burglars (Whitaker, Leto and Yoakam) on the monitors and find that they’re reluctant to leave as what they want is in the ’panic room’.
I have to admit that upon first hearing of Panic Room it does sound like a boring premise. I mean, you have your main characters stuck inside a small room most of the time and all the action takes place in a house… well, at least it’s a very big house with three floors. Yet the basic premise has been given a slap upside the script to ensure that there’s rarely a boring minute. Running at just under two hours, there’s always something going on. The edgy pace sustains your interest as the intruders are constantly fed new ideas on how to get in THAT room. Having the movie confined to the house is what makes it work but unfortunately there’s only so much you can do by limiting yourself to three floors and a special room.
Panic Room does remain dark in its nature and at times it can be very creepy and disturbing. Something I’ve come to expect from Fincher. I don’t think you’ll be jumping out of your seat but some scenes might cause you to turn away. I however was shifting lower and further on the edge of my seat.
Performances are strong and believable, even if the villains verge on the slightly predictable side. The mother and daughter relationship between Foster and Stewart works well and gives the movie a girls against boys scenario. Also having Foster change her character from a ’’lost trophy wife’’ who’s easily scared into a strong ’’bag of guts’’ woman makes for another plus. It’s not like she’s Lara Croft as you can see that Foster’s character is afraid but she has to do scary things in an effort to protect her daughter and survive. And then there’s the dreaded trio of bad guys, all playing a certain type that we’ve seen before. There’s the impatient one with the idea (Jared Leto), the one who doesn’t want to hurt anyone (Forest Whitaker) and the mysterious one who refuses to play by the rules (Dwight Yoakam). Again, they’re all good (Whitaker in particular), even if it is like being amongst old friends, but they do keep the audience on familiar territory, because you know what bad guys are like these days!
If anything stands out then it’s the panic room itself. I’ve never really heard of such a room before but its role in the movie allows for the characters to play the waiting game with one another. Interestingly, although the panic room is designed to make you feel safe the characters in there are always afraid of the danger outside.
Fincher does a lot to keep the audience interested with what’s going on at home by pulling off some impossibly impressive camera movements. The camera appears to swoop through all three floors of the house during one take as well as going through walls, vents and tiny keyholes. If that doesn’t make for enough eye-candy then there is always Jodie Foster.
Panic Room makes for a classy and effective thriller with the kind of sharp editing that Ashley Smith really likes and a few surprises that’ll leave you wondering what the crooks are really after and how’s it all going to end. The movie never overruns on anything irrelevant and it makes for great entertainment, but unlike Fincher’s previous work this one could prove to be quickly forgettable. It may not be up to the grand scale of Se7en (something Fincher has already admitted to) yet Panic Room easily shows off the directors’ talents.
Now Mr Fincher, we know Panic Room is a good movie, but when are you going to get back to directing something really great?
Rating - 7 out of 10
Points of interest:
Panic Room was made on a budget of $48 million.
In the US the film scored an opening weekend total of $30.05 million.
Nicole Kidman was originally attached to the film but pulled out three weeks into production due to a knee injury. However she does make a cameo as a voice on the other end of the telephone.
After Kidman pulled out David Fincher considered closing down the film, but Columbia Pictures seemed to be in a rush to get Panic Room in. So he called Jodie Foster at the last minute seeing as she wasn’t directing Flora Plum. She agreed to take on the role of Meg Altman and had just nine days to prepare.
Jodie Foster became pregnant with her second son during filming. This caused major problems for Fincher (trying to hide Foster’s huge belly). In the end he decided to shoot (and re-shoot) scenes with Foster after she had given birth because Fincher thought she looked like a ’’sweaty crack whore’’.
After a test screening Columbia Pictures asked Fincher if he would consider filming a different ending. Fincher agreed but said it would cost them $3.5 million to rebuild the set. Columbia declined and decided to leave the end as it is.