Panic Room | | Cast : | Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart | | Director : | David Fincher | | Studio : | Columbia Tristar Hom | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | March 29, 2002 | | DVD Released Date : | December 02, 2003 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 26, 2005 | | Summary | Odorless, Colorless Locked-Room Mystery | Content
 | "Panic Room" is like carbon monoxide: odorless and colorless, and completely inoffensive to the victim until it kills.
"Panic Room" is one of those DVDs you see in the rental store on Friday and decide to try out; a week later you can't remember what you saw, exactly. See? Just like carbon monoxide, the movie slaughters two of your finite hours on Planet Earth that you could have been using more enjoyably.
Yes, this is a locked-room mystery, where the locked-room in question is a high-tech secret chamber located in an Upper Eastside Manhattan townhouse, and where the mystery is why a normally gifted, edgy director like David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) would direct a boring, colorless clunker like this.
Jodie Foster plays Meg Altman, a divorcee who with her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart, who has three modes: sullen, smirking, and sick) moves into a multi-million dollar New York townhouse. Mother and daughter discuss their mutual disdain for the new digs, eat a pizza, and fall asleep.
Now: it's fortunate Jodie toys with the high-tech Panic Room before turning in, because---wouldn't ya know it---along come three villains with the vilest of intentions. Talk about a bad first night in the new pad!
It turns out the trio of thugs want the fortune stowed in the panic room by the townhouses's previous owner, and in their bumbling they manage to alert mom and daughter, who scuttle into the little fortress-within-a-fortress. So what you end up with is a 2 hour+ siege movie. Siege movies can be great, or they can be tedious; this movie takes the latter path and with, evidently, no regrets.
It doesn't help that two of the three villains are pretty much out for the count when they realize they have to take on real live people holed up in the panic room. Dwight Yoakum plays Raoul, who is the real deal, a determined psycho if there ever was one, and he rallies his team's flagging spirits and the three determine to beg, borrow or steal their way into the high-tech little broom closet.
And that's pretty much it. The much-touted CGI enhancement of camera movements in the townhouse is fine, and this is a technically competent movie. It's also a massively boring movie, and imminently forgettable; everything here has been done before, far more masterfully, in an underrated little gem called "Wait Until Dark". Everyone in "Panic Room" seems bored, and it's a contagious emotion, because by the conclusion you'll be bored too.
Jodie Foster plays Jodie Foster, who toys with claustrophobia for about 5 minutes but tosses that potentially intereting plot device aside as soon as the going gets tough. She turned down a reprisal of the Clarisse Starling role in "Hannibal" for this?
The incomparable and talented Jared Leto ("American Psycho", "Requiem for a Dream")tries to liven up the dull proceedings, and gets a bullet in the head for his efforts. Forest Whitaker cashes a check, and Dwight Yoakum, unrecognizable until the credits, plays the sleepiest psycho in cinematic history.
If you're fine wasting two hours of your life on a dead, dull, dismal, and oddly colorless siege movie, then by all means rent "Panic Room." My advice: spend the time going through a brochure to build a panic room of your own---at least you'll get something out of *that* ordeal.
JSG |
| Rating | | | Date | June 22, 2005 | | Summary | Very solid and good film | Content
| Jodie Foster stars in this amazing thriller from director David Fincher (the director of Fight Club and Seven). Foster plays a divorced mother living with her daughter and they move into a large mansion in New York. But, unfortunately, while there, 3 robbers invade the house, as they didn't know that anyone was moved into the house. Foster's character and her daughter hide themselves in a "panic room", which no one else can get in after the door is closed because the door is so heavily reinforced. But, what the robbers want is in that room, so they will do everything possible to get in. It's a good thriller with some very suspensful moments, but if you're looking for lots of scares, this probably isn't it. It has some funny moments and some great action scenes that are memorable. Foster acts great in the film as does Forest Whitaker, who plays one of the robbers. Highly reccomended. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 28, 2005 | | Summary | Where's the scary parts? | Content
| When i rented this movie i thought it was supposed to be a thriller. i didnt know it was supposed to be about people trying to rob and woman and her kid. So the robbers don't know the people are in the house as they break in. when the woman discovers people are in the house, she grabs her daughter and they run in the panic room. But what they don't know is what the robbers want is in the panic room. it is a very good movie with good action, and some funny moments. i recommend the rent. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 23, 2005 | | Summary | Flimsy premise a good movie finally make | Content
| While nowhere near on the blockbuster status of Steven Spielberg or the respectability of Martin Scorsese, David Fincher is a very capable director telling his stories in such a way that it's almost like in any other hands, it would just flat apart. Like Panic Room. Very simple basic premise yet he pulls it off, with a habit of showing off now and then.
Meg and her daughter Sarah live in a big ass house with 3(or was it 4?) floors. There's a special thing about this house. It contains a "panic room", essentially if there's burglars, the housemates can run into the room and barricade themselves in as it's protected by steel and concrete.
But, on the first night(convenient, the FIRST night they stay in the house), 3 burglars come in looking for something. Meg and Sarah manage just in time to make it into the room. Only one problem: the burglars want what's inside the room, all 3 million of it.
It's essentially a cat and mouse thriller only the mouse is inside a cage and cat can't get him. So the cat tries several ways to get at the mouse and substitute the cat with 3 burglars, the mouse with 2 women and there's your movie. Feels slightly long but luckily enough happens that it almost makes you feel when the movie's over.
Performances are likable especially the 3 burglars, having distinct personalities without the 3 stooges attitude some films have. The women are likable although to be honest, Jodie Foster does these screams now and then and they're just irritating to listen to. And the ending is almost abrupt as the film ends and you go "isn't there a scene missing or something?"
Always a fan of different camera techniques, he expands on ideas that he used during Fight Club where the camera can go to places that ordinarily it can't and some work, such as the scene where the burglars make their appearance and the camera passes in the opening of a cup handle, others like seeing a light bulb filament makes you think he's just trying to make you go "neat".
This reminds me of the Game, also by Fincher: it's not one of the better ones that he's done but still it's quite likable. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 22, 2005 | | Summary | Another David Fincher winner after Fight Club's success | Content
| A very good cast with a very unique director on how the direction goes with each character in the movie. Nicole Kidman was suppose to play the star role, but with her injury in Moulin Rouge, Fincher asked Jodie Foster to do it and I heard she didn't really want to play this role, but after watching the making of it on the bonus DVD's, she was really looking forward to it...I had to re-purchase this movie though in the 3-Disc Special Edition though once I found out that Columbia re-released it...Which is very much worth it if anybody owns the 2-Disc Collector's Edition of Fight Club which I thought was out of print, but found about 8 copies of it at a Best Buy location. Panic Room being a movie about home invasion and what the three men want (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, & Dwight Yoakum) are in the panic room and Foster and her kid (Kristen Stewart) do not let them in. The three men begin to find their own ways to get into the panic room, using a small gas tank and gas them out to just giving them the finger on camera and cussing at them from outside. Their situation gets more horrifying when Foster's husband in the movie visits them after a frightening phone call. He gets beaten to death on camera while Foster and her kid watches painfully. The tragic ending involves two of the men dead and one escaping with the money that was hidden in the floor panel of the panic room. Foster and her kid find a new place in New York City. Fincher made a great MAZE of a movie in this dark movie of home invasion. This one is a must if you enjoyed his previous hits such as FIGH CLUB, SE7EN, & ALIEN 3 if you liked it. *shrug* |
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