*** (out of ****)
Starring Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakum, Kristen Stewart, Jared Leto, and Patrick Bauchau
Directed by David Fincher and written by David Koepp
2002 R
Hitchcock would have been proud of “Panic Room.” I’m pretty sure there’s even a stand-in for him in the first act, walking down the street with a double chin. “Panic Room” is a clever exercise is suspense in which the characters, location, motivations, and who has what is quickly and sharply established, leading to a game of cat-and-mouse between the recently divorced mom and daughter (Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart) and three burglars (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and Dwight Yoakum). The title room, as made abundantly clear in the previews, is an impregnable steel chamber with its own air, plumbing, and phone line, connected to the master bedroom, and that’s where Foster and Stewart spend most of the movie, and that’s where the burglars want to get in.
There’s some background information established earlier on, but mostly so it can serve the machinations of suspense, such as Foster has just moved in to her new house, hasn’t set up the panic room’s phone line, doesn’t know quite how it works, and doesn’t know any of her neighbors. Also there is the relationship among the three burglars, who begin the film sort of bumbling and amusing and who turn positively deadly by the end. One is greedy (Leto), one is strapped for cash (Whitaker), and one is just plain evil (Yoakum). Divulging more than that would be a faux pas on my part. The performances of all the key players are quick and decisive; we aren’t burdened with unnecessary backstories, nor are we presented with mindless zombies about whom we care nothing. We know what we need to know from snatches of dialogue. Whitaker is especially effective as the burglar who only agreed to the caper because he thought no one would be living there yet.
But the movie’s main character is the house, a four-story set built just for the movie, a Manhattan brownstone of gloom and secrets, with which we become intimate by the end of the film. Director David Fincher, smarting from the lukewarm box-office response to his energetic but intellectually convoluted “Fight Club,” turns strictly to suspense. He mixes genuine sets with computer enhancements, allowing his camera to swoop through banisters, in-between floors, and into locks, and is occasionally excessive, especially when every camera movement is accompanied by a needless “whooshing” noise.
Although “Panic Room” certainly has Hitchcock’s joy of winding suspense, it lacks Hitch’s sense of mischief and naughtiness. Few modern thrillers achieve this, exceptions being the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo” and “Blood Simple.” “Panic Room” also does not extend beyond the thriller genre in the way that Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” “Psycho,” “Rear Window,” and “Rope” do, or, more recently, Christopher Nolan’s “Memento.” But what Fincher and writer David Koepp get right more than anything else is a strict adherence to the rules they establish early in the film. There are plenty of surprises, certainly, but none that contradict, none that leave us trying to make sense of it all, instead of squeezing the armrest in terror. The machine works, and we leave satisfied.
Finished April 10th, 2002
Copyright (c) 2002 Friday & Saturday Night