Panic Room (Superbit, 2002)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by David Koepp
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forest Whittaker, Dwight Yoakam, and Jared Leto

Features:

• Teaser Trailer
  
• Filmographies
  

Recently divorced, Meg Altman (Foster) and her daughter, Sarah (Stewart), are on the prowl for a new house. They find a wonderful new one that has a surprise in it. The surprise is called a "panic room". See, the former owner of the house, was an eccentric paranoid with too much money to spend--so he created what's essentially a fully-functional vault with everything you'd need to go hide in it and wait for whatever trouble's happening in the rest of the house to go on its merry way. The night the Altmans move in, three burglars enter the house. Junior (Leto) is an heir of the former owner. It seems he couldn't wait for the lawyers to help settle the disagreement with the other heirs (he also sees a quick way to support his drug habit for the next month), so he hires Burnham (Whittaker) and Raoul (Yoakam) to help him get into the house and break into the safe, which just happens to be in the aforementioned panic room. The same room that Meg and her daughter dive into and seal up when they hear the burglars enter.

This movie had me going right up until the very end and then it lost me. I'm going to try to explain what I mean without creating any spoilers. The writers decided to create a little too much sympathy for Whittaker's character. Granted he was one of the ones who broke into the house, but they go into a little too much detail about why he did it in the first place, and it really screwed up the ending for me. I can't go into much more detail than that without giving anything away and I don't want to do that. I do, however, want to see Yoakam play a character that isn't a complete asshole. He does that very well, but I have a hunch that he has it in him to play a really nice character some day. Maybe there is someone in Hollywood that will allow him to break out of this typecasting he seems to have gotten himself into thanks to Sling Blade.

If you don't know much about Superbit DVDs, you might have gotten upset about the lack of adequate special features on this disc. Fear not, though. The Superbit line basically forgoes all of that in favor of super high quality audio and video. Now, for those of you with high quality home theatre systems, you'll be pleased--because this disc will enhance your viewing pleasure and all of the video and audio is top notch. The only problem is, if you don't have such a system that can take advantage--you'll probably want the regular version, complete with commentary tracks and other bonus stuff. Trouble is: the Superbit flavor is the only one available right now.

If a double-disc Superbit Deluxe version of this film were to hit the market, complete with a second disc of stacked stuff, I might consider putting it on the purchase list. But without anything to commend itself, unless you're a huge fan of the film or of Fincher, then you might want to keep this as a rental.