Panic Room (2002)

David Fincher

USA

112 min, color, English

I have heard that if they set a monkey at a computer and let it pound on the keyboard an infinite amount of time, it would eventually produce the collected works of Shakespeare by chance. This, of course, assumes they could find a monkey that could live a gajillion years without getting CTS and that they could get a copy of Windows to function for 10 minutes without crashing. (Hmm, of these two, the latter is just impossible, even in dreams). Well, if they gave this same monkey one month, then it would produce the script for Panic Room. Give it a couple more days and will crank out The Scorpion King and Blade II, and Spider-man as well. Come to think of it, this monkey is probably locked in some LA studio apartment banging away at the keyboard while Hollywood heavy-weights put every week's worth of typing on film.

Panic Room is Jodie Foster's new horror drama and not a euphemism for the theater where you saw the movie. The title refers to a room padded with reinforced steel that serves as sort of a citadel for a fortress. If your Manhattan chic apartment is suddenly invaded by maradeuing thugs from The Bronx, you can retreat to the safety of the panic room with its heavy doors, and general impenetrability. Of course, most of these claims are revealed as sham throughout the movie, however unintentionally. Bottom line: the panic room is not nearly as hard to get into as claimed.

This was a thorny issue with me. Get this: the supposedly impenetrable room has its air supply come through simple vents and lines that go along the wall ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE ROOM, very convenient if one wants to tamper with the air of those inside. Also, there is a little hole in the wall (I guess to let various fluids out) that the characters use to shout through and also flash some light on the neighbor. Seems a pretty easy way to get some gas inside as well. Also, why didn't Meg simply tie the cell phone on the end of a stick and get it through the hole? What the hell, dangling a note on a cord would probably help as well even if it would require waiting till morning.

But I digress. Panic Room is about Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart). The mother has just separated from her insanely rich husband after having discovered what insanely rich husbands do: bed their secretaries. She buys a Manhattan apartment which could only have cost the GNP of a medium-sized East European country. It remains a complete mystery why two women would need 50 rooms and an elevator.

Naturally, during the very first night three burglars break in to do what burglars do: burglarize. These, however, are no regular shmucks. They are special shmucks. Junior (Jared Leto) is one of the gazillion heirs of the previous owner of the place and does not want to share. So he decides to get together with Burnham (Dwight Yoakam) who is down on his luck father of ten desperate to make some cash using the skills acquired on the job at the company making the panic rooms. There's also a shadowy character Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) whose purpose is to look shadowy.

As expected, Meg and Sarah manage to lock themselves in the panic room and the rest of the film is about the special shmucks trying to get in the room before Jodie Foster melts them with her steely gaze. To throw some more drama into the unexciting action, Fincher made Sarah a diabetic whose lack of sugar finally causes an extra 10 seconds of high tension. If we were supposed to sympathize with Burnham's plight of a good person forced to commit a crime for the sake of his children, then I think the director has lost it. If we were supposed to be on the edge of our seats while the villains hurled insults at each other while forgetting to break the fucking cameras in the house, then I think our intelligence has been made the village idiot.

I am puzzled by the reviews that seem to find depth in Meg's character. I am less than thrilled by those that find some assertion of her dignity and triumph in femininity in the way she handles the burglary. Such pretensions are shallow. Meg's first reaction is to call her estranged husband for help. She does not fight her way out, like Linda Hamilton would, but instead relies on the stupidity of the burglars. Finally, she is saved by one of the people that had come to rob the house! So much for that theory. All I could see was Jodie Foster teetering on the edge of hysteria. She is perfect for that role, probably because she is hysterical. (The initial choice for the role, Nicole Kidman, would have also worked well for the same reason.)

The one thing that brooks no denial is the visually impressive cinematography. Although much of the directing was less than inspiring, the camerawork made up for most. The unflinching and detached eye prowls through the house, through keyholes, swivelling up the stairs, and through objects. It seems there's no place where it cannot go. Every shot is perfectly matched and the transitions are so smooth and seamless that the sequences appear as one long shot instead of multiple digitally spliced ones.

So, half-thumb up for Fincher, two thumbs down for Koepp's script, and all appendages up for Hall, Khondji, Haygood, and Wall.

October 28, 2002