Panic Room!

Rrrrrrrrrright guess what?  Time for another review?  If that's your question you guessed right (OK enough of that).  So this one is going to be on David Fincher's thriller film, Panic Room, which was released back in 2002, starring Jodie Foster.  And with that let's do the usual and give the plot a look....

The story is set in New York City, where Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kirsten Stewart) who have bought an expansive four story house in the upper west side.  The previous occupant of the house was a millionaire reclusive who had a secure room built to prevent intruders from breaking in, which is called a "panic room".  The "panic room" also has several surveillance cameras as well a thick steel door, concrete walls, and a PA communications system and a separate phone line.  During their first night in the house, it is broken into by Junior (Jared Leto) who is the grandson of the previous owner, who is joined by Burnham (Forrest Whittaker) an employee of the residence's security company, and also by Raoul (Dwight Yoakman) a gunman who conceals his face by wearing a ski mask.  Junior soon realises that from the unpacked boxes that the Altmans have moved in and he manages to persuade Burnham to carry on with the job, as they intend to break into the panic room where there are 3 million dollars in bearer bonds locked in the vault.

However on having a sleepless night, Meg enters the panic room to shut the lights off and notices the three men on the surveillance cameras, and she wakes up Sarah and takes her into the panic room just before the men can get there.  With no way into the panic room, Burnham comes up with an idea to get them out by using propane gas which he pumps through the vents.  However Meg looking through the supplies in the room, finds a fire safety blanket as well as a lighter which she uses to ignite the gas, which in turn destroys the propane gas tank Burnham used, which also leaves Junior injured by the fire.  Meg in attempt to call for help finally manages to tap into the main telephone line and calls her ex-husband Stephen Altman (Patrick Bauchau) but Raoul cuts off the connection down in the basement before Meg can finish talking to him.  After this Junior gives up on trying to find a way into the panic and room and decides to leave, but he let's slip that there is actually more money in the vault than he had let on.  As a result of this Raoul shoots Junior dead and he forces Bunrham to help them get into the room, and not long after Stephen arrives, whom Raoul viciously beats up in an effort to force Meg out of the panic room.  And this soon leads into the film's tense and dramatic climax where Meg must try and survive the ordeal and save Sarah and Stephen from the burglars...

Panic room is an almost classic suspense film and it is really well put together by its director David Fincher, and its the old tale of cat and mouse with the criminals breaking and entering into the house, a la a more dramatic and adult version of Home Alone (just a whole lot better really!) or even Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs.  Throughout the film there is a tense atmosphere and Fincher does an excellent job in building on the suspense slowly as the film progresses, starting from the burglars breaking into the house up until Meg's final showdown with them.  And the film also of course builds on the strong vulnerable female character who is put in a dangerous situation where she must protect her daughter.  And with the burglars you get the juxtaposition of the three different characters, the young naive cocky upstart in Junior, the decent but troubled family man in Burnham, and the icy sociopath in Raoul.  And the characters are well catered for in screenwriter David Koepp's screenplay which is well written and at times even witty.

In the film Fincher also uses a couple of recurring themes that he has used in his previous films, such as the reclusive millionaire, who was a "shut-in" which was one of the aspects of the plot in Seven and Fight Club of people who live in seclusion.  Also in Koepp's screenplay he pokes fun at popular culture and how they can be ignorant of references to literature, as in Seven where Brad Pitt says reads the "Marqis De Sade" and says "Sade" as the name of the modern day singer.  And in Panic Room the estate agent doesn't understand Meg's reference to the author Edgar Allan Poe as she says "have you ever read any Poe?" and the estate agent bluffs it by saying "no, but I loved her last album!".   

Which brings me onto the performances which are all great, beginning with Jodie Foster who is great as the strong and vulnerable single mother, a recent divorcee who finds herself in a crisis where she must take charge and find a way to fight against the robbers.  Foster actually arrived on the production, replacing Nicole Kidman who was originally cast in the role but had to pull out due to an injury, but filming had to be delayed further again as Jodie Foster was pregnant at the time and they didn't resume filming until after she gave birth.  Foster has several highlights in the film, where Meg uses the fire blanket to cover herself when she tries to ignite a fire in the vents to stop the robbers from the breaking in.  Also the scene where Meg has to try and talk her way out of letting two patrolling cops enter her house while the crisis in ongoing.  Foster in that scene has some good lines of dialogue where one of the cops asks what she said on the phone to her husband before she was cut off and Meg replies "If you insist on knowing the end of the line, I was going to say there are three things I would do right now for you if you would jump into bed with me!".  And to this the other cop replies "Look you wanna go, or do you want her to tell what three things!".

Forrest Whittaker is also excellent in his role as Burnham, who is a essentially a decent family man with financial troubles of his own and he reluctantly takes on his role in breaking into the panic room, and he later plays a key part in saving Meg and Sarah.  Whittaker also has some good lines in the film especially in his arguments with Junior and Raoul, and in their first scene when Burnham insists that "that I don't want any help from Joe Pesci over there!" as he refers to Raoul and his ski mask.  Also later on when Junior tries to communicate with Meg and Sarah in the panic room by writing on sheets of paper, he fails in his attempts and Burnham sarcastically replies "What? They're not coming down?!".

Jared Leto for the most part steals the film as the not so bright and hotheaded Junior, who is the "mastermind" behind the panic room robbery, but in his plan he failed to take into account that the Altmans would move in early!  Leto has plenty of fine moments in the film and funny lines of dialogue, especially in a scene where the three men argue loudly outside the panic room and Junior shouts "shut the fuck up there are people trying to sleep over there!".  Also in the scene where Burnham gets some tools from the garden shed and he walks past Junior asking him if he is just going to stand there, and Junior says "Why? What have you got, MacGuyver!".  I also like his insistance in trying to communicate with Meg and Sarah over a one-way PA comms system, where he speaks to her but they can't hear him, and Burnham "its a PA system, not an intercom" and Junior replies "I know.  I'm just scaring her!" as if that makes any difference!

Dwight Yoakam is also quite creepy in his role as the wiry, soft spoken sociopath Raoul, who provides the film with a surprise twist when he suddenly turns around kills Junior with his gun.  Yoakam also get's some fine lines, particularly in the scene where he argues with Junior over the money and he says to Junior "don't take that tone with me, jerkwad, or I'll shove it up your ass and snap it off!" and later "say that shit about the money again, baby cakes!".  Also in the scene where he is introduced by Junior to Burnham, Raoul shows his gun to Burnham who looks at him with disgust and says "Who are you?!" and he Raoul calmly replies "I'm Raoul".  Yoakam also has an amusing moment where they first try to run upstairs to get into the panic room, as Meg and Sarah shut the door just time, and Junior goes bananas battering the door, and he smashes the glass mirror on another door, which Raoul looks on and says to Junior "that's seven years bad luck".  

In other performances Kirsten Stewart is really good as Meg's diabetic daughter Sarah, who is quite a feisty character and at the start of the film she rides her scooter all over the house when they are shown it by the estate agents.  Stewart is provided with some funny smart-ass dialogue for the precocious character she plays, especially in the opening scene where she rides on her scooter on the pavement while Meg talks to the estate agent, and Meg asks "Sarah do you have to ride that here?" and Sarah says "Mom, we're in the street!".  Stewart has another great line where she lies in the panic room, with Burnham and Raoul who finally get in at this point and Burnham says "Nice house you guys have got. Mom's rich?" and Sarah weakly replies "Dad's rich.  Mom's just mad!".  And lastly I'll mention Stephen Bauchau who is somewhat underused in the film as Meg's ex-husband, but he does a decent enough job with his role, although he is mainly in it to be used just as a punching bag for Raoul!

Direction wise, David Fincher does a fine job here and he paces the film well as it slowly builds into its dramatic climax.  Fincher also makes great use of CGI to make it look like the camera runs continuously through the house in one fluid action, and this put to great use in the scene when the burglars arrive at the house, and the camera zooms through the door lock as one of them tries to open it and the camera zooms out again.  Fincher also again employed the use of digital colour correction like he did with Fight Club, which gives the film its green tint (also like in The Matrix).  The film also has another fine music score by Howard Shore, who once again provides the soundtrack for Fincher (as he did before for his previous films Seven and The Game) and Shore creates plenty of suspenseful dramatic passages of music, as well as a very ambient and atmospheric title theme.

As for the flaws???  Well yes Panic Room isn't quite perfect.  The main problem is to do with the film's climax in that it becomes pretty over the top in the end and all the credibility starts to fly out the window.  For starters why would Meg bother even trying to use her husband, Stephen, who at this point can barely move, as Raoul had beaten him up so much, to try and hold a gun in waiting for when Raoul and Burnham will come back downstairs.  As no doubt Stephen could be easily disarmed as he can hardly move at that point in the film at all, and Meg even has to use a table lamp to prop his arms up enough to use the gun.  The idea of the cops at the door while it remains one of the film's most amusing scenes its also one of the daftest as well.  This is because the cop's character (played by Paul Schulze) is basically spelling out to the audience while talking to Meg "give us a sign that something is not quite right in there!" in such a not-so-sutble way by saying stupid things like "if there is something you wan't to tell us, but you don't want to say, you could try blinking your eyes.  That might be something you could do safely".  I mean come on!  Talk about patronising the audience or what????!

Anyway all that aside Panic Room still remains a thoroughly entertaining and suspensful thriller film, which is worth a watch if you haven't already seen it.

And so I will leave it there!