Panic Room (2002)
Cast: Jodie Foster, Jared Leto
Director: David Fincher
Synopsis: Foster and kid are trapped in their own“Panic Room” when Psychos drop in
Reviewed by: Zeeshan Mahmud

 

The name David Fincher is probably the only reason to dislike this film.

Perhaps David Koepp's name as well.

Fincher, because three of the four films he directed before Panic Room are genuine contenders for any list of the best films of the 1990s. One of them could quite reasonably be argued to be the finest film of the decade. Chronologically, they are Se7en, The Game and Fight Club. Koepp, because, despite occasional flashes of promise, he has never really mastered the art of constructing a satisfying story, as evidenced by the disappointing resolution of Stir of Echoes.

The expectations surrounding Fincher after Fight Club were unlike anything Hollywood had seen for quite some time. He was expected to deliver another film that audiences would be discussing for years while they waited for his next project.

Instead, we were given what amounts to a rather despicable version of Home Alone starring Jodie Foster.

A recently divorced mother and her daughter are spending their first night in their new Manhattan townhouse when, shortly after one o'clock in the morning, three burglars break into the house. Neither side was expecting company.

Mother and daughter flee into a purpose-built panic room designed specifically for such emergencies. It is virtually impregnable.

Ordinarily, that would be the end of the story. The burglars would eventually give up and leave while the occupants calmly telephoned the police.

Unfortunately, the phone inside the panic room has yet to be connected.

More importantly, the burglars have just realised that the object they came to steal is actually inside the room with Foster and her daughter.

Few Fincher admirers were particularly enthusiastic about Panic Room, even though it ultimately became his biggest commercial success to that point. The principal problem lies with the screenplay. Koepp's script never develops beyond an efficient high-concept thriller, and despite being released with an R rating, the profanity and occasional bursts of violence feel entirely unnecessary. There is little here that requires such treatment, nor is there much emotional or psychological depth to justify it.

Nicole Kidman, originally cast in the lead role before injury forced her withdrawal, seemed an ideal choice for the material. Jodie Foster, despite giving the role every ounce of professionalism one would expect, is ultimately defeated by the limitations of the screenplay rather than any shortcomings in her own performance.

Viewed without the burden of Fincher's reputation, however, Panic Room is by no means a bad film. It is a reasonably effective and well-crafted thriller that occasionally recalls Stephen King's Cujo in its relentless siege scenario.

Think of it as Cujo meets Home Alone, albeit without the uncompromising payoff.

If you've never seen Se7en, The Game or Fight Club, then Panic Room will probably strike you as a perfectly good way to spend ninety-odd minutes on a Friday evening. There is even one genuinely outstanding sequence in which Foster leaves the safety of the panic room to retrieve her mobile phone, a scene that reminds us exactly why Fincher is regarded as one of the finest visual stylists working today.

The disappointment is not that Panic Room is a bad film.

It is that David Fincher was capable of making something far, far better.

One cannot help thinking that he should have pursued the James Ellroy adaptation that reportedly interested him instead.