David Fincher of Fight Club fame calls his own new movie Panic Room a "guilty pleasure" because it lacks any real substance.
He is correct, at least on the surface, because Panic Room is a mechanical thriller about thugs who terrify a mother and daughter during an elaborate B&E at a Manhattan brownstone.
Yet Fincher is under-selling himself and his movie on another level, because the sophisticated, superior performances he coaxes from his entire cast start to layer in emotional subtext that lets this thriller chill your blood, in the manner of such classics of this genre as In Cold Blood or Wait Until Dark.
When you care about the people in a mechanical thriller, when their lives and interactions have meaning beyond the obvious, beyond reason, the drama sings.
Although she was literally a last-minute replacement for Nicole Kidman, Jodie Foster is remarkable as the heroine mom. Foster embodies strength even when she plays weakness, such as panic. Her obvious intelligence permeates her character. So you know that she will not be just another slasher movie victim in a superficial scare flick. Foster lets us suspend disbelief more quickly.
Startling new discovery Kristen Stewart, who eerily embodies the look and energy of a young Jodie, is the daughter. The two are easy to relate to as a duo, as our emotional base in the story.
Villains are just as important in making this plotting work. Refreshingly, Panic Room is well cast with three men who give the conflict a depth of energy and meaning. Each represents a type but none is the kind of silly cliche often found in thrillers, not in the writing, especially not in the performances.
The trio is played by Forest Whitaker, as the sensitive, wavering crook with inside knowledge, Jared Leto as the drugged-out semi-psycho who provides a dark comic relief and country singer Dwight Yoakam nearly unrecognizable as the brooding mystery man who relates to the plot development like a match to a fuse.
The interactions between the three crooks, sometimes played for cruel laughs, are just as interesting as the relationship of Foster and Stewart's complex mother-and-daughter characters. Then, when you pit each side against the others, the stakes go up and the plot is played out at a life-and-death pitch.
The style-conscious, hi-tech Fincher is superb at gearing up the mechanics of movies, so Panic Room is a slick spectacle that provides all the thrills and chills you would expect.
But working with a lean and very much mean script by veteran writer David Koepp, Fincher delivers the goods by letting the female victims assert themselves. They use a safe room with an impenetrable metal door and a bank of video surveillance cameras to even up the odds against their armed and dangerous male foes. There are complications, of course.
And their ultimate fate, and that of their assailants, implodes like a muffled, anguished cry. Panic Room may be a guilty pleasure, after all, but it is not easily forgotten.
Perhaps we need this kind of harrowing saga to sharpen our survival skills in a real-life world in which the threats do not follow a movie script. That is why Panic Room has resonance.
(More on: Panic Room).
(This film is rated AA)
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