Jodie Foster plays Meg, a divorcee moving into a beautiful New York pad with her daughter Sarah (Stewart). The flat, previously owned by a paranoid millionaire, has one special feature: a windowless, impenetrable safe room off the main bedroom which overlooks every part of the house with CCTV. Snapping it up before anyone else can view it, she moves in two weeks early.
So when three robbers turn up on their first night in the house, they�re a bit puzzled as to why there�s two people sleeping in it. What the robbers know that Meg and Sarah don�t, is that there is a large fortune hidden in the house. Meg and Sarah hear robbers wake up and lock themselves into the now rather handy panic room. Who�d have thought they�d have to use it, on their first night and all, eh? The problem is, that�s exactly where the money is hidden.
The real knack of this film is the depiction of the fluctuating balance of psychological and physical power on either side of the door to the panic room. Also well-observed is the power relationships between the robbers themselves, which are on a knife edge as one of them, Raoul (Yoakam), is a stranger, brought along by Junior (Leto) without the prior knowledge of the rather more placid Burnham (Whitaker). Burnham�s ideal of a clean, no-bloodshed robbery goes out the window the minute Raoul walks through the door.
Inside the panic room, the mother-daughter relationship becomes less concrete as Meg tends to panic and Sarah shows her resourcefulness. Meg has the desperado quality of the survivor, while Sarah has the calmness to sit it out like a child who has seen too many parental rows.
All in all, this is a good, tense thriller with devilishly good camerawork. The camera goes through keyholes, cracks in the plaster, between banisters � at one point I did think, �Oh, come on, he�s showing off now.� But there are beautiful, minutes-long shots which snake around the house to give a real sense of presence. And this isn�t a sit-around-and-worry story; such a simple set-up leads to a surprising amount of action, and the plot doesn�t rest for a moment.
Although it�s not the most death-defyingly-tense or film of my life, it was a good enough story in itself and is well worth your fiver at the cinema. |
