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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 18.68%
Worth A Look: 37.36%
Just Average: 23.08%
Pretty Crappy: 14.29%
Sucks: 6.59%
14 reviews, 98 user ratings
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Panic Room |
by Bishop
"Menacing and Suspenseful"

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Panic Room, the latest effort from David Fincher is the type of Hitchcock-ian, limited-set piece that often fails to live up to the prototypes devised by the master. Panic Room, however, succeeds as an excercise in menace and suspense, with a GREAT performance by Dwight Yoakam.Firstly, this film gets down to brass tacks straight away. As the recently divorced mother played by Jodie Foster moves into a swank, upscale Manhattan home with her daughter. As Foster notices, one of the rooms seems a bit odd. She is right. A swath of wall swings open to reveal a "Panic Room" that allows the residents of the home to lock themselves inside in total security, with surveilance and communication equipment to boot. Sure enough, this panic room is gonna come in handy. As shortly thereafter, Foster and her daughter's home is invaded by three thieves, one who has been recently informed of the circumstances of the break-in. Forest Whitaker and Jared Leto are the two burglars who are joined by the menacing, ski-mask clad Raul, played brilliantly to a creepy extent by Dwight Yoakam. As it turns out, Whitaker designs Panic Rooms and home security systems, and knows that there is no way to get in. What results is a cat and mouse game between foster and the burglars who want something that is located inside the Panic Room. Special challenges arise for Foster as she struggles to outwhit and stay ahead of the burglars, as all of the action in the film takes place in the home. This film is a great exercise in building suspenseful crescendos and holding the audience in rapt suspense. The menacing aspect of the film is created solely by Yoakam's mysterious and ruthless "Raul," who will stop at nothing to get what is inside the panic room. All in all, this film is a good one, the ending is somewhat cliche, and Fincher's normally welcome camera zooms and pans are over used during the first half of the film and begin to grow tiresome. The shortcomings however, are quite made up for by the suspense and the performance of Yoakam. Foster is decent as a single mother who is trying to hold it together to protect her daughter and herself. The audience is left wondering about how things are going to end up, however cliche it may turn out to be. All in all this film is a little better than average, but not quite a four star effort.You should probably see this film at some point if you like Hitchcock-ian suspense, and because of the performance of Dwight Yoakam. Like Jude Law in A. I., Yoakam here demonstrates how a single performance can elevate the quality of a movie. 3 Stars.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=4733&reviewer=289 originally posted: 04/06/02 18:16:34
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USA 29-Mar-2002 (R) DVD: 30-Mar-2004
UK N/A
Australia 11-Apr-2002
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