FILM
MOVIE REVIEW
Panic Room **½
by Ed Gonzalez on March 21, 2002 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own
Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) moves into the posh home of an eccentric millionaire who hid his fortune inside his safe room which doubles as a makeshift hideaway against domestic invaders. Panic Room feels an awful lot like the movie an exhausted director would make after something like Fight Club. A seemingly disinterested David Fincher allows cinematographer Darius Khondji and a slew of special effects wizards to turn an Upper West Side apartment into a 3-D dollhouse for a recently divorced mother of a diabetic tomboy. Aggravating yet incredibly punchy, Panic Room brings to mind a PoMo Home Alone though Rear Window For Dummies is more like it. A blabbermouth Jared Leto is insufferable as one of the film's trio of intruders though Whitaker wonderfully keeps the lid on the John Coffey heart-of-gold in his good-guy-gone-bad Burnham. While overly mechanical and shamelessly self-obsessed, Panic Room is nonetheless replete with some incredible set pieces. Actually, it's all about the opening credit sequence and Jodie's slow-mo dashes into the panic room. That and those elegant wine glasses. Panic Room may lack depth but it's great eye-candy nonetheless.
- Director(s): David Fincher
- Screenplay: David Koepp
- Cast: Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, Patrick Bauchau, Ian Buchanan, Ann Magnuson
- Distributor: Columbia Pictures
- Runtime: 120 min.
- Rating: R
- Year: 2002
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