Panic Room (2002)
Directed by David Fincher
Written by David Koepp
Starring Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forrest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam
Release Date March 29th, 2002
Published March 28th, 2002
David Fincher is my favorite director. For the uninitiated, Fincher is the brilliant eye behind the lens of Fight Club and Seven, two stylishly violent, high voltage thrillers that pair catchy visuals with blistering commentary on our consumer culture. Fincher's new film, Panic Room, doesn't aspire to social commentary, it's just a straight edge thriller easy to enjoy as long as you don't expect too much from it.
Panic Room stars Jodie Foster as Meg Altman, a divorcee raising a teen daughter (Kristen Stewart) and looking for a new home. A real estate agent shows Meg a gorgeous New York brownstone. 3-stories, multiple bedrooms, single bath, cable ready, and oh yeah there is this little room built by the ultra-paranoid former tenant. This room is essentially a safe built for a human being, with two feet of cement encasing two feet of steel on each side of the 6 by 10 foot area.
The panic room is meant to keep the owner safe from a break in. Needless to say Meg and her daughter move in immediately and on their first night there is a break in, forcing Meg and her daughter to put the panic room to use. Unfortunately for Meg, the men behind the break in, Junior (Jared Leto), Burnham (Forest Whitaker) and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam, yes Dwight Yoakam playing a guy named Raoul), need to get into the panic room to get what they came for.
The first half of Panic Room encompasses the character introductions, and explores the space of the panic room and it's very good. Director David Fincher's camera helps build suspense through shadow and light. The props go to Oscar winner Conrad W. Hall's Cinematography as well for giving the apartment and the titular panic room dimension, we want a strong sense of the space and we get that while also ramping up tension between the thieves and our innocent mom and daughter duo.
Once Meg and her daughter are inside the panic room, the film begins to lose steam. There are still a few good moments but the attempts by the gang to get inside the panic room are right out of MacGyver's playbook as are Meg's attempts to thwart them. It is those MacGyver-like logical leaps like Meg's figuring out how to hook up the panic room’s phone line and Burnham’s oh so lucky guess as to what she's doing that border on the ridiculous. That scene, amongst others, undermines the tension and kills some of the suspense.
Still, Panic Room is not a bad movie. Jodie Foster is good in a very difficult role that seems the least defined of all of the characters. Each of the bad guys is able to communicate their motives and personalities in their interaction with each other while Foster's only interaction for most of the film is her daughter, which is confined to being the protective mother. Forest Whitaker and Jared Leto have good chemistry as a team but Dwight Yoakam seems woefully miscast as Raoul, the supposed intimidator who is more laughable than imposing.
Visually, Fincher is very much on his game, with unique camera work and one of the most visually interesting credit sequences I've ever seen. Be forewarned: if you have a problem with motion sickness you may want to bring some medicine because Fincher's camera rolling through walls and windows and flying through keyholes and air ducts can be somewhat jarring.
