Panic Room (Cinema: May 2002)

David Fincher's career has been something of a roulette wheel, albeit a very fine one. Firstly the underrealised, overfrustrated Alien 3, second the magnificent Se7en, third the overambitious The Game & most recently the zeitgeist grappling Fight Club. Based on this system The Panic Room falls on an odd. Unlucky for Fincher & unlucky for us.

From the off this is a very different affair to the ultra-modernism of Fight Club. The Panic Room is a return to a more classy neighbourhood - the upper West side (of New York) to be exact, something born out by another attention grabbing & terribly original title sequence which spells out the Hitchcockian nature of his latest opus. And once again the sheer quality of the pictures themselves are worth the entrance fee, the crispness of Darius Khondji's lense begging applause even before the action has begun.

The Panic Room projects itself as a cut above the rest. It abounds with an intellect contrary to the pulp wisdom of Fight Club & reeks of high class pretention. It builds on classical foundations of literary muscle & celluloid legend. The slowly unfolding suspense feeds of all the classic Hollywood elements: the claustrophobic setting, haunted house, rampant scopophilia, a sterling cast, clean direction, probing camerawork (defying all physical convention) & an unfaultably upmarket & rigid production. But this classical literary dependence is both its strength & its weakness.

The film is undoubtedly an incredible page-turner but falls short onscreen. It promises so much & almost delivers but the cat and mouse suspense - which is essentially the film's core - is never more than a fabulous game of chess - something which surprisingly fails on a cinematic level here. As with Fincher's other odd numbered films, you can't help but feel you're not getting the same 100% Fincher that gave us Se7en & Fight Club.

Of course the whole thing remains visually unblemished. As we've come to expect from Fincher it looks spectacular & outshines 95% of Hollywood fare. The Hitchcockian salute resounding through every layer makes our heroine - Foster's strong central performance - somewhat of an irony; a point accentuated by the frumpy mother-figure coming across more as an sexy inner city Lara Croft. An unflinching feminine exterior cracked only by regular demands for cleavage (usually Foster prancing about on all fours) to please the exec's upstairs. Howard Shore's score echoes that of Ed Hermann's collaborations with Hitch and you can't help but think that if the big man were alive today - this is EXACTLY what he would be turning out.

The Panic Room is definitely required viewing & easily head & shoulders above the competition but from a man who has made 2 of the most outstanding films of the last decade (& probably of all time) this is something of an understatement.

Here's to Fincher's next film - one that isn't against the odds.

RATING:

(c)Limer 2002