A trio of stereotypes burgle a house. There's the `funny' one, Junior (Jared Leto) - - he knows where the booty is stashed. The `decent' one, Burnham (Forest Whitaker) - - he knows how to get it. And there's the `psycho', Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) - - he knows how to look really, really creepy. The place is empty though, right? RIGHT? 'Course not. Jodie Foster moved in earlier today with her surly daughter Kristen Stewart in tow. Still, fret not, for within this four-storey edifice of gloom is a "panic room", a secure chamber from which our heroines can view the house on CCTV and wait for the rozzers to arrive. Only - bugger - the phone isn't hooked up. They're safe in there, sure, but the kid's a diabetic, and the thugs are set on getting in...
Likely to be bracketed alongside The Game in the David Fincher canon (ie. "Not as good as..."), Panic Room will still have you gasping and giggling. Short on substance and subtext (at a push it can be read as a swipe at American isolationism), David Koepp's script is pure and simple: a series of succinct suspense set-pieces leavened with sparky dialogue and Elmore Leonard-style bungling crims.
And Fincher has a ball - tracking through walls, floors and coffee pots to up the ooh!-factor for cineastes and coat a sparky B-movie with A-picture visual veneer. Quite simply, he's showing off. Goody.
DVD Extras:
A disappointment. The Fincher-created teaser trailer and - - contain yourselves - - filmographies. Given the extras-splurged Se7en and Fight Club, expect a special edition.
