What a waste of my time!!!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fantastic!

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The film is well done and quite tensed. Most of the faults listed in the spoiler reviews are not faults, but highly frustrated viewers that are not very smart. The acting is good. And the tension is high enough the viewer won't notice the perceived goofs. Only the ending is weird and blows the movie. That last scene seems to have been added just before releasing the movie. Which gratuitously draws attention to the story. Yea, it is a heist story. And it's better than the ridiculous Home Alone. But there is no character development. And no goal. Just a two hour filler for some Saturday evening entertainment.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

Since the vast majority of the "reviews" I've seen on the site for this fast paced, fantastically acted, tense, intelligent thriller from one of the greatest living directors today are lists of things they think make them more intelligent than the writers, I'll retort in kind. Skip to the final paragraph to avoid the following spoiler-based refutations:1. Why did she get such a big house?: She's a rich, recent divorcé with a kid who wanted a backyard in New York City and she could afford it.2. Why didn't she hear them whispering three floors down through several doors and walls?: Sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it, very quietly? 3. Why didn't they just leave them in the elevator?: Because they didn't make the decision, she did because she felt the impenetrable panic room was safer. 4. How did they get the gas in the vents when it had its own ventilation system?: Because the guy who designed them knew how to get into it, its separate from the main vents but he knew the precise location at which he could break through the dry wall and drill into the simple polyurethane vent, not steal or cement. 5. Why didn't the fire blow up the propane tank?: Because the propane was being filtered into the vent secured to the wall with tape, the heat melted the tape and the air pressure blew the hose away from the wall and the further from the wall the faster the gas dissipated, that's why only the guy right next to the wall got burned. 6. Why didn't the designer know about the intercom?: He didn't say he didn't know, he just told the one character that you couldn't just talk back to the camera with no audio functionality, you have to push the wall-mounted intercom button that was behind the bed cushion he flipped over first. 7. Why would Forest Whitaker go back to help the family?: Because he didn't know the psycho, didn't plan for violence at all and had a wife and kid of his own whom they likely reminded him of as you can see by his constant defense of them from violence imposed by Raul. He just planned to walk in, open the panic room door and crack the safe. 8. Why let the bonds fly in the wind at the end?: They weren't properly secured in his jacket so he was still clutching them with his hands up until the police told him to open his palm so they could check for weapons. 9. Why was the climax so anti-climactic?: Because it wasn't a big dumb summer blockbuster, not everything has to end with a huge explosion, they get back to business as usual and try to get on with their lives, happily ever after.While this isn't admittedly Fincher's best, it bares his signature, style, detail, passion and quality, most directors are content to throw in a jump scare when the mirror closes, Fincher goes out of his way to make even the most mundane of plots smart, exciting and entertaining. It's not a perfect film or a piece of high art, but it's an 8/10 from me.

You can not fault Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, and the cast in this one. They do a great job of trying to put this over. Unfortunately, either the script writers were on strike, or just plain stupid when they put this thing into writing. I mean, these crooks have to be the most stupid crooks ever. Why would you wait until a place has been sold and moved into to decide to break into a safe that has millions of dollars in it? I mean, I would have been there while it was empty to do this. The script does not really give you enough background on why this circumstance came to be other than talking about some estate, but still little sense is made of this.The script even makes fun of it's flaws late in the film when Foster takes a sledge hammer around and starts knocking out closed circuit cameras, and one of the crooks makes their most intelligent words in the film - "Why the h*ll didn't we think of that?"If you buy the hokey premise of the script then you enjoy the suspense it creates. The trouble is there are so many holes that you have to be a fan of Swiss cheese to really do that. Still, I did enjoy seeing the folks in this cast try to make this into a good film. If it were not for their acting, my rating would be a 1. There is so much wrong with the script that all I can recommend is if you put your brain in park, and just watch it for the cast, you will enjoy it. If you try to make any sense out of the actions the plot generates, you will wind up in a rubber room with a straight jacket to keep you restrained. In fact, that seems to happen to the cast in this one.

I consider this to be a pretty sub-par offering from Fincher. An unmemorable and dire hour and forty five minutes awaits whoever watches this film. A fair bit of my dislike of the film stems from the aesthetics of the movie – The CGI was pretty mediocre and distracting (such as from the not-really-tracking tracking shots as we are taken around the house, through walls and keyholes and such). Panic Room has that crappy indistinct and cloudy look that a lot of modern movies shot digitally have, despite the fact that the movie was filmed with Panavision Panaflex Platinum cameras. In his defence, Fincher made this in 2002 and a lot of modern movies haven't moved on from this look, whereas he clearly has if you look at his recent films. With a premise that harks back to the days of Hitchcock, Panic Room sees Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart locked in their home's safe room, as a gang of robbers search the house for valuables. Unfortunately, events during the course of the film become so far- fetched and unbelievable that your suspension of disbelief kind of commits suicide and you know longer care what's happening because it's so ridiculous and contrived. The script is a bit dumb, which makes it all the more strange that Fincher directed this. Best Scene: The opening credits were pretty cool. Apparently it was worked on for a whole year!