Customer Reviews

Panic Room (Three Disc Special Edition)

5 star:		(162)
4 star:		(97)
3 star:		(66)
2 star:		(42)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

I had to wonder, coming out of the theater, if PANIC ROOM wasn't David Fincher's attempt to Keep Hollywood Happy. After his brilliant FIGHT CLUB suffered mixed reviews and box office failure, he must have been aware that he needed a Big Hit if he wanted to keep making movies.

Enter PANIC ROOM, a dark, sharp thriller which showcases the talents of Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker in a cat-and-mouse game between the new owner of a house and the builder of its security systems who is hoping to steal something the previous owner left behind: Whitaker and his crew break in, thinking the new occupants haven't yet moved in, and Foster has time to rush herself and her daughter into the house's Panic Room, an extremely secure high-tech saferoom: the room keeps the intruders out, but it also keeps their intended victims in.

Foster is brilliant as the claustrophobic mom who will do anything to keep her daughter safe, but the film comes up short when she makes choices that most of the audience will perceive as short-sighted at best and stupid at worst. Foster overcomes this script shortcoming by playing the choices convincingly--you can read the conundrum in her face and believe in her reasoning when she makes the poor choice.

It's a credit to Whitaker that his "villain" character remains sympathetic throughout--he's not the sort of terrorist-cum-robber that made Alan Rickman famous in DIE HARD. You find yourself hoping that some accord can be reached--that he can just get what he wants and get out safely. Unfortunately, his psychotic partners-in-crime make that an impossibility.

Fincher has always done an excellent job of taking us to the dark side of things, leading the camera into places that the human eye could never see. I'm not sure PANIC ROOM will have the staying power and rewatchability of FIGHT CLUB or SE7EN, but it's definitely the sort of taut thriller that's been missing from the A-movie circuit for years. Not quite a Popcorn Movie...more like a hint of Summer in early Spring.

There is more psychological suspense in this thriller than even Hannibal could contribute. Jodie Foster plays Meg Altman, a recently divorced woman searching for a home in a wealthier area of Manhattan. She and daughter Sarah decide on a beautiful multi-level apartment that seems to have a rather unusual lay-out. The seriously intellectual Meg quickly notices that there seems to be square footage missing from the home. One room seems smaller than it should.

How interesting...Meg is right. Behind a secret wall lies the infamous "Panic Room", designed it seems, to withstand (and I am partially joking here) an atomic bomb explosion. The Room is entirely self-sufficient, able to operate and sustain life independently from the outside world. Everything needed to survive is packaged neatly behind the heavy steel doors (think War Games). In fact, the presence of the panic room is so omnious and claustrophobic, it becomes an acting character itself.

How lucky then, are Sarah and mother Meg when a group of burglers, headed by Burnham, (Whitaker)...break into the home in search of a cache of money supposedly hidden in the panic room. And how unlucky are the two women when it comes to our realisation that Burnham used to be a designer and architect of "panic rooms" himself. He is confident that he can break into the room, using his knowledge of a panic room's inherent design.

The real game becomes a slow evolution from -Can they escape?- and -Will they get in?-, cat and mouse style, to who is most strategic. Burnham may seem to have the upper hand, but Meg is quick-witted and familiar with her own home. She plays her cards well and it is exciting to see her instinctual skills come to life.

As the trailers of "The Panic Room" now entice you with more and more scenes, take them seriously with their new motto: bring a friend with you to see "The Panic Room", because you will need to hold on to someone. Great advice. I saw this movie alone and "The Panic Room" nearly gave me a panic attack!

Five stars for edge-of-your-seat action, suspense, fantasic performances, and the last minute additon of Jodie Foster to play Meg. I really don't think Nicole Kidman has the muscle or strength to pull of the physical requirements of a movie like this (She had to bow out due to an injury). Bravo Jodie on surfacing to the limelight again to make another spectacular film! I believe this is her first film since "The King and I". She proves even a Hollywood Mommy can kick [behind] in a physically demanding role. I am already impatient waiting for her next move in the film world. This movie is fabulous and could be a great date flick...especially since you will feel it necessary to grab hold of someone during the intense scenes. Enjoy. I have no doubt you will.

David Fincher has always been a very visual director. He understands the most innovative and revolutionary film techniques to appeal to every sense. This is apparent in his films 'Se7en' and 'Fight Club'; however in this outing delivers a film that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats for 100 minutes in the thriller 'Panic Room'.

The premise when first looked at is rather simple. Recently divorced mother Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) moves into a huge new house on Manhattan's West Side, which is not only enormous but has something most places don't; a panic room. This room is solid concrete, on top of steel, fixed out with surveillance cameras; in short nothing can get in, or out.

On their first night Meg and daughter Sarah (Kirsten Stewart), whose relationship has been strained since the divorce, are awoken by three criminals (Jared Leto, Dwight Yokam, and the socially minded Forest Whitaker) who are hell bent in entering the house. Thus Meg and Sarah run into the panic room hidden behind a mirror in the master bedroom, expecting the thieves will ransack the house and leave. The plot twists from here, as the criminals actually want the 22 million dollars in bearer bonds hidden in a floor safe in the panic room. What ensues is an intense pseudo game of `hide and seek' with Meg and Sarah trapped by the three criminals.

The characters that Fincher establishes are amazing. The film wouldn't have the same feel if Nicole Kidman (who was due to be cast) were in the role of Meg. It is the dichotomy Foster portrays between a sensitive, maternal Female, who is forced to react in a very masculine way. In this sense Foster plays a character much like Clarice in `Silence of the lambs', who's femininity in brought to the forefront but extenuous circumstances.

Perhaps the single thing that strikes the audience and appeals to them is Fincher's mind blowing camera work. He uses the camera like another member of the cast, as the importance he imbues on the camera. The viewer is taken place conventional rigs could never take the viewer before. Into locks, between banisters, even a spiraling shot down the staircase that can only be resembled to Hitchcocks shot in `Vertigo'. David Fincher is a director who truly understands film as a visual medium. Lets face it there are times where his idea's could have flopped in `Panic Room' when an entire room is reconstructed with CG then the camera moves through it could have looked really hokey... but it works to great effect.

My only criticism of the film is sometimes the pacing slows down a bit. Fincher's work always moves very quickly and I feel at times the middle of the film lagged a little; otherwise it was great.

`Panic Room' is a fantastic piece of modern cinema. A great thriller that will keep the audience of the edge of their seats. Fincher's masterful direction coupled with brilliant acting allows the film to be a stand out as one of the best this year.

A stupid film this is not. 'Panic Room' is a suspense-packed, tension-filled, thinking person's thriller. It isn't dumbed-down and doesn't play stupid games with the audience. (These days, that's hard to find in a movie.)

Jodie Foster plays a rich woman who has just bought a Manhattan townhouse for herself and her teenage daughter. The house contains a "panic room," a shelter the homeowners can use in case of a break-in or an attack. Well...you know what happens next. Three criminals break in looking for money during the ladies' first night in the house. Thankfully, the women can seek refuge in the panic room. But guess where the money is hidden?

David Fincher is a very gifted director. He does a lot of things visually that are very subtle, such as the opening title sequence which covers the sprawling, wide-open city of New York. (It's a nice antithesis compared to the confined space of the panic room.) Fincher also displays some really nifty camera effects, mainly just to show you that he _can_ do them. But what I appreciate is the fact that Fincher has made this film very approachable for a much wider audience than his previous films ('Seven' and 'Fight Club' in particular). If you've been reluctant to see a Fincher film because of what you've heard about his other films, leave your worries outside the theatre. Instead, walk into the theatre and expect to have a great time watching a great cast do great work.

When we watch this kind of thriller, with its contrived and implausible premises, we had better check first the following three points: 1) director; 2) actor(s); 3) and scriptwriter. In the case of "Panic Room," the very person who gathers our most enhansed expectation is, naturally, the first one, David Fincher, and when it comes to his trademark sweeping cameraworks, you soon realize he did a good job.

First, don't be late for the show, not a minute for, you'll soon see, the most innovative part of the whole film is, rather ironically, its first five minutes in which you can see one of the most original titleback designs you ever see these days. As we are greatly intrigued by Kyle Cooper's titles in Fincher's "Se7en," so we are to be astonished to see the film's title and cast's names as if really floating in the sky of Manhattan. It is very stylish and original, so not a blink should not allowed. Don't let your friends talk to you or detain you in front of the box-office, thinking it's just an opening credit sequence.

And now we come to No. 2, Ms. Foster. Replacing Nicole Kidman who bailed out from the production (but whose voice is briefly heard as a cameo), Jodie Foster gives her good, solid performance as the heroine of modern-day thriller, who, as always, should appears ordinary at first, but later becomes incredibly tough when required. As her daughter appears newcomer Kristen Stewart in good shape, but the real story begins when three burglers (Whitaker, Yoakam, Leto, all typecast) break into her 4-storey building equipped with "Panic Room," a secret high-tech room prepared in case of emergency.

And, guys, there's a rub, I mean No. 3, the script. Oh, if you are a fan of first-rate thrillers like me, you will be dismayed, as you easily find so many holes in David Koepp's story that you can predict what the characters are going to do the next five minutes. Even the dialogues are barely average, one of them referring to SOS signal too banal way, making me anticipate the name of, before the character speaks, "Titanic," and she says exactly the same way! (No way!) Seriously, David Koepp's scripts, if you remember, are always helped greatly by master directors -- see "Spider-man" "Jurassic Park" and so on and on.... Well, I admit his cat-and-mouse story is just ... adequate, but nothing more. But what the heck is this plot hole (not a minor one, you'll notice) about door censor? Or, how come such a rich person, who can afford to take an entire floor on the spot in today's New York City, fails to provide enough security for herself and her child? Come on!

Those complaints aside, the director David Fincher keeps the ball rolling on pretty tactfully, not boring the viewers till the film's not a little predictable ending. To be frank, though I do not admire his technical things so much as others, it is, I admit, something breathlesstaking to watch his sweeping camerawork -- see, for example, how the camera floats in the air, from above the floor through the dark room and even a coffee pot, too. And it also peeps through the key hole (wow, some might say). After all, these things remain in your memory best because, for that purpose, stylist Fincher took 40 and 50 and more takes of each scene.

In conclusion, "Panic Room" caters what we expect from modern thrillers based on our fears about our modern life in Western Civilization, especially about ever increasing crimes. However, don't look for reality, just fun, and larger-than-life fun at that.

In her first starring role since 1999's Anna and the King, Jodie Foster is simply wonderful as Meg Altman in this one heck of a thriller movie, PANIC ROOM! In this film there is little time to establish any since of normality, until the action breaks with a tag-team of three robbers breaking into Meg's new four story 4,200sq foot NYC brownstone.
Meg, of course immedently wakes her daughter and they run to the panic room, a fortified fortress, within her castle of a home! From her station in the Panic Room, Meg, though the use of cameras commissions a standoff with the robbers, them all the time trying to get into the Panic Room, with Meg trying all the time to contact the outside world to help her get out of the Panic Room.
This makes for some very interesting situations when you inject a diabetic daughter, a caring ex-husband,dazzling visual effects, a fearless robber, a money-hungery robber and another with a heart of gold!
This is a film not to be missed! Walk, no run out to your local theater and take in a viewing of this film! Jodie Foster is just fabulous yet again!

In her first role since 1999's Anna and the King, Jodie Foster is simply wonderful as Meg Altman in this one heck of a thriller movie, PANIC ROOM! In this film there is little time to establish any since of normality, until the action breaks with a tag-team of three robbers breaking into Meg's new four story 4,200sq foot NYC brownstone. Meg, of course immedently wakes her daughter and they run to the Panic Room, a fortified fortress, within her castle of a home! From her station in the Panic Room, Meg, though the use of cameras commissions a standoff with the robbers, them all the time trying to get into the Panic Room, with Meg trying all the time to contact the outside world to help her get out of the Panic Room. This makes for some very intersting situations when you inject a diabetic daughter, a caring ex-husband, dazzling visual effects, a fearless robber, a money -hungery robber and another with heart of gold! This is a film not to be missed!

After seeing the trailers for months, I was very eager to see "The Panic Room," but feared that the trailers gave away too much of the plot. Fortunately, the movie has many surprises and ultimately is a great popcorn movie. It is also terrific to see Jodie Foster again after a three year absence from the screen (1999's Anna and the King), and in such an accessible movie. Jodie plays a newly separated New Yorker who moves, with her 11-year-old daughter, into a great old Brownstone in Manhattan. The apartment features a panic room with concrete and steel-reinforced walls. The action starts right away and continues to build throughout the movie. The plot is fairly simplistic, but director David Finch manages to milk it for all it's worth by employing great camera trickery, including some fantastic shots where the camera zooms from floor to floor in the house, through key holes, etc.

On the negative side, the characters are not well-developed and we know very little about Jodie and her daugher. Action movies obviously don't need to have characters as fully developed as do dramas, but it still would be nice to have more multi-layered characters. Also, the burglars are exceedingly stupid and single-minded, particularly Jared Leto who displays some horrific overacting. Overall, however, I enjoyed the movie a great deal, as did the audience with whom I saw the movie.

It's embarassing to me how some of "Panic room" reviewers enjoy to attack this movie's plot and script. They say: "Jodie Foster's character should have done this, should have done that, the bad guys didn't notice this and that, there's a plot-hole in this part...".

I just want to remind them that "Panic room" is a FICTION MOVIE. THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REAL. That's what enterteinment is about. "Panic room" is a thriller, right? So, in a thriller, the script is written in such a way that the viewers WILL BE THRILLED. Of course, the writers attempt to attain their script to reality as long as they can, but sometimes they have to forsake reality to provide their movie with some parts that will simply be transformed in scenes that will create on the audience the effect they expect.

I just want to know what do reviewers that gave poor rating to this movie on grounds of plot-incredibility think of movies like "Harry Potter", "Lord of the rings" and others alike. If they are coherent, they also despise these movies, and all they want to watch are czech-polish movies about the lives of two old seamstresses escaping Lithuania during the second world war (this is an example, I'm not saying that czech movies or polish movies are bad, they just usually are not action thrillers). What I want to say is, "Panic room" is good enterteinment, it's a movie that leaves you with your eyes wide open every scene, and you just want to know what's going to happen next. The acting is excellent, as well as director David Fincher, the action sequences are good... What more could you expect from a thriller? If thrillers were supposed to be real, there would be a Ferrari-Lamborghini chase through the streets of San Francisco every ten minutes, there would be a terrorist attack in O'Hare airport every hour, a subway-train wreck coming up in Fifth Avenue every week, etc.

Just relax and enjoy "Panic room". It's very cool.

Grade 8.8/10

This review is more about the "SuperBit" transfer of the movie to DVD than the movie itself. The movie itself is great and I highly recommend it.

However, the transfer on to this 2002 "SuperBit" version is very lacking in several areas. The SUPERBIT idea is a good one that is poorly executed on this transfer. The original intent was to maximize video and audio quality by limiting or even eliminating extra features (like trailers, documentaries, featurettes, and "Making-Of" snippets) to reserve space such that the movie can be presented in the highest quality.

They have failed to do that here. The video and audio quality are not what they could be.

First, the movie is encoded onto a DVD-9 RSDL disc. This means the DVD is capable of storing 9.5 GB of data. However, not even 6 GB is used. As a result, the video and audio quality is not what it could be.

"Panic Room" is a 112 minute movie. Any movie that is 2 hours long or less should be able to easily fit on a DVD-9 disc at maximum encoding rate, provided no extra features are placed on the disc. The maximum video encoding rate to fit a 2 hour (or less) movie onto a DVD-9 disc is 9.8 Mbps. However, this SuperBit version averages only 6.5 Mbps.

This SuperBit version offers audio encoding in 3 types: Dolby 2.0 Surround 192kbps, Dolby Digital 5.1, and DTS 5.1. At first glance this is great news, until you discover that the DTS encoding isn't as high quality as it could be. The DD 2.0 Surround is presented at a bitrate of 192bkps as expected. So is the DD 5.1 at the expected 384kbps rate. DTS 5.1 can go as high as 1536 kbps, but on this disc is presented at only 768 kbps. This is unsatisfactory given the fact that one-third of the available disc space of the DVD-9 isn't even used. The DTS encoding rate should be at least 1024 kbps for a movie like this. This would represent a 33% increase in filespace for the audio portion, but a much larger increase in audio quality to the human ear. The filespace increase would be only about 256 MB, which is very reasonable when you have over 3 GB of space not even being used.

If they had encoded "Panic Room" on this SuperBit disc at an average video bitrate of 9.5 Mbps, and removed the trailers and features, they would have had enough space to present all three audio encodings above, especially the DTS 5.1 encoding at the 1024 kbps rate I stated.

Such an encoding process would have used 9.4 GB of the 9.5 GB of available space. A much better way to fill up the DVD-9 disc and adhere to the spirit of the SuperBit ideal. The result would have been a movie encoded to DVD-9 at a much higher video and audio quality than what was presented on this disc.

I notice that they will be offering a repackaged SuperBit version in October 2006. Hopefully that version will fix the flaws I just mentioned and present the movie in the highest encoding rate both video-wise and audio-wise. It might even offer the better DD-EX 6.1 and DTS-ES 6.1 audio encodings for that extra rear center channel that many A/V receivers can process now.

Another thing I am noticing is that many times, for popular movies, they are released them in 2-disc editions. The first disc contains only the movie and the second disc is all the extra stuff. If the movie contains both DD and DTS encodings on the first disc, with a very high video bitrate of 9.0 Mbps or greater, it is already in the SuperBit mold.