Panic Room

Hey all it's time for another movie review. This time the movie of choice is Panic Room. This movie is written by David Koepp (Spider-Man, I think that's how its spelled, it's a little early right now): good, starring Jodie Foster (Silence Of The Lambs) and Forrest Whitaker (Color Of Money, Ghost Dog): better, and directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven): Excellent. David Fincher has become one of my favorite directors as of late and he's only done like 4 movies. But they are 4 excellent movies (Seven, The Game, Fight Club, & Panic Room).

Ok, enough of talking about how wonderful this guys directing is lets get to what the movie is like. The movie starts off with a divorced woman and her daughter moving into a new house in Manhattan. This house is huge by our Chicago suburb standards and this is in Manhattan where space is a helluva lot more limited. Ok, while there being shown this house the mom notices that one of the rooms should be bigger than it really is. That is when the realtor shows them the "panic room" (see that's where the title comes from, clever huh?). What this room is, is basically bad guys come into the house, you run in, big thick steel door slams shut, you call cops bad guys arrested while your safe in your little room. If by some reason the separate buried phone line is cut off, you have supplies and a separate air supply to last for days. Now just from what I said (which is actually the first 15 minutes of the movie) you can see where this is going.

Well needless to say the family first night in the new house see three intruders break in. After some rather comical sneaking around by the bad guys and a hung over Jodie Foster she realizes that she is not alone in her house, grabs her daughter and runs into the convienetly locate panic room.

Now this is where the movie really starts to shine. The bad guys want something that is in that room, Jodie Foster doesn't want to come out, hmmm.... That sounds like a big problem for the bad guys. So they start in on battle of wits of trying to get Foster to come out of her little steel room. They try everything from gassing them with propane to the ol' switcheroo. Well eventually, Jodie Foster is trapped outside the room while the bad guys are inside with her daughter. So she sets up the house while the bad guys are trying to get what they are after (money, which would be the only reason they'd be there in the first place).

Not too terribly deep of a plot on this one, but it is definitely worth watching and buy if your into that kind of things. Now for a little bitching about the movie, not much though I promise. First with the actual movie, Jodie Foster can be a little annoying during the movie, at least I thought she was. I'm sure if it was actual or intentional, she was supposed to be playing a divorcee of a wealthy pharmaceutical guy and so she never actually lived on her own. The daughter is a little to bitchy, it makes it hard to like her and the tension of her diabetic seizure just isn't there because of it. Now for a little more technical side of it. This movie has no extra whatsoever, unless you consider a trailer and cast filmogrophies an extra. It was released under Columbia's Superbit collection. Supposedly with this collection all the space on the disc is taken up by superior audio and video. While the video looks really good (course everything is looking really good since I got my new TV), the dts sound is excellent. But does it warrant the amount of space that it is taking up the disc, I don't think so. Black Hawk Down, which is also by Columbia was also as skimpy on the extras but it was not released under the superbit collection. Seth had an article that talked about how film companies were going to cut back on extras on DVD's, I guess Columbia/Tri-Star is going to jump into that with both feet.

Alright enough bitching, I have to say that this is overall a really enjoyable movie, despite the lack of extras. David Fincher has once again made a superb movie that made its way into my collection.

MW