Panic Room
In the last decade, David Fincher has established himself as one of Hollywood’s finest directors. After making his feature film debut with the divisive Alien III, Ficher hit his stride with 1995’s Seven, one of the most stylistic and innovative thrillers of the ‘90s. The Game (1997), while not reaching the artistic heights of Seven, is a thoroughly enjoyable thriller with many wicked twists and turns along the way. The controversial Fight Club (1999) is no favorite of mine, but it does boast a unique directorial vision and has developed a cult following.
Panic Room, starring Jodie Foster, is Fincher’s latest film. While it’s a generally effective thriller, it’s also by far the most generic of Fincher’s movies, making it a somewhat disappointing effort from one of the few Hollywood directors with the guts to buck the system.
Foster plays Meg Altman, a recently divorced woman with custody of her 10-year-old daughter. In an effort to stick it to her wealthy ex-husband, she decides to move into an enormous (three-story) dwelling in the heart of New York City (not a cheap deal for anyone familiar with NYC).
In addition to its enormity, the condo also boasts an elevator and a highly unusual “panic room.” This shelter-for-the-wealthy offers protection in case intruders break in. In addition to steel walls, it also packs medical supplies, a phone with its own separate line, and a high-tech surveillance system with cameras wired to every room in the house.
The movie gets off to a promising start, with Fincher and screenwriter David Koepp (Carlito’s Way, Jurassic Park) doing a nice job of establishing Meg’s loneliness and her protectiveness of her daughter. It doesn’t hurt that Foster nails a devastating scene in which she weeps in the bathtub and tries to drink her sorrows away.
Eventually Meg goes to bed, and as she sleeps Fincher ups the already high creepy factor, most notably with a stunning tracking shot that starts on the upper floor and continues down through the house. Three burglars (played by Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto and Dwight Yoakam) arrive and break into the house. Without giving away too many details, Foster and her daughter eventually wind up in the Panic Room, which sets up a strategic battle of wits with the burglars, who are after loot that’s located in -- you guessed it -- the Panic Room.
Fincher’s film has some things going for it, most notably some interesting plot twists and top-notch performances by the film’s leads. Foster, a talented actress when given a decent part, rips into her best role since The Silence Of The Lambs. Whitaker, whose career has floundered since his promising turn as jazz legend Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood’s Bird, shows again that he is a talented actor deserving of better roles.
Unfortunately, Panic Room has plenty of things working against it, too. Leto and Yoakam’s characters are woefully written and poorly acted. Leto’s character is so idiotic that he quickly lapses into caricature. It’s a highly disappointing performance from an attractive young actor who’s made a number of intriguing career choices since getting started on MTV’s “My So-Called Life” (check out his turn in Requiem For A Dream). Yoakam is equally as cartoonish as the despicable bad guy, a role he played much more effectively in Slingblade.
The film also demands the audience suspend its disbelief a few times too many. This unfortunate trend culminates with a truly ridiculous (albeit hilarious) sequence in which a character is hit full-force in the head with a sledgehammer, suffers a one-story fall, and then rises immediately and bounds up the stairs. Amazing!
For the most part, though, Panic Room does a decent job of keeping you on the edge of your seat, wondering what’s going to happen next. It’s a partially effective thriller, but ultimately a disappointment coming from a director as talented as Fincher.
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Aside from Jodie Foster pounding a glass of wine in impressive fashion, there isn't much here to entice you to indulge.
A divorce looms large, and any points gained with the ladies for handsome man Jared Leto are cancelled out by "gross" Dwight Yoakam.
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