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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Panic Room
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  out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
2½ stars out of 4
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Director David Fincher specializes in visually stylish thrillers
("Seven," "Fight Club"), so it's not surprising that the opening sequence -
Manhattan buildings with title credits superimposed - is stunning and the
ominous music immediately sets the mood. After that, it's a simple story of
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Determined to relocate from
Greenwich, Connecticut, after a devastating divorce, Meg Altman (Jodie Foster)
buys an immense Upper West Side "townstone" (townhouse-brownstone) owned by a
recently deceased, eccentric and reclusive millionaire whose heirs have been
unable to find his fortune. The rainy night she moves in with her adolescent,
diabetic daughter (Kristen Stewart), there's a break-in - and they're forced to
flee for protection to "the panic room," a safe, fortified, hidden chamber with
its own power and phone lines and security-camera monitors. They're terrorized
by a stereotypical trio of thieves (peaceable Forest Whitaker, maniacal Jared
Leto, dimwitted Dwight Yoakam) who run rampage through the house - but what the
burglars are after is hidden in the high-tech sanctuary where the mother and
daughter have taken refuge. "We can't get in," the intruders realize. "We have
to get them to come out." But all the participants make such lame decisions
along the way that the edgy impact is diluted. While Jodie Foster's resourceful
fight for survival is convincing, David Koepp's script is predictable and David
Fincher's direction is manipulative. So it's left to the two cinematographers,
Conrad W. Hall and Darius Khondji, along with composer Howard Shore, to heighten
the nerve-fraying tension. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Panic
Room" is a dark, suspenseful 6 but it never reaches the gripping genre standard
set by Alfred Hitchcock.
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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