Mike Fincher is the director that brings us the new Jodie Foster thriller, Panic Room. Fincher was behind the camera for films such as Fight Club, The Game and se7en. His latest is another incarnation in the thriller vein but doesn't pull out the punches with anything as dramatic or compelling as he has done in the past. Still a good time at the theaters, Panic Room is highly entertaining but nowhere near as exciting as the television ads might make you think.
Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her boyish daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) move into a huge house in Manhattan after Meg's divorce from Sarah's dad. The home is built with a "panic room", a room isolated from the rest of the house and built to be unbreakable. The owner built it to be used in the event of a home invasion. Meg buys the house not for the room, but she ends up needing it when intruders break in on the very night she and her daughter have moved in.
Fincher's direction is hip and trendy with the taking us inside the walls effect as the camera pans through the house, the kind of stuff we saw him do in Fight Club and this keeps things fresh. Fincher has taken David Koepp's excellently written taut game of cat and mouse and works our nerves with it. The movie keeps you on the edge of your seat as you wonder what they are going to do to get out of the situation. It is not one of the best thrillers, but it was one of the best we have seen in awhile. The story had a couple of holes but at least they get worked into the script.
The acting is decent, thrillers don't normally score too many points in the acting area but one does wonder why Jodie Foster took this role and not Clarice Starling in Hannibal. Kristen Stewart is good as the diabetic daughter. The three intruders are also all excellent actors including the surprising Dwight Yoakam as Raul, a quiet deadly looking Kevin Spacey kind of character. Jared Leto is perfect as the dumb spoiled brat thief and Forest Whitaker is as good as usual.
Panic Room is definitely worth the full price ticket if you like thrillers and suspense dramas, but it does not take us anywhere new or leave us feeling really overwhelmed with excitement and suspense. It is not compelling or a must see unless you want to go to the movies to see a thriller.
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