New York itself plays a major role in Panic Room, where the paranoid need protection from the hyper, anxiety-saturated dark element. It's, evidently, where back-alley threats and urban terrorists attack the pure and virtuous wealthy New Yorkers.



Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) are living in a spacious Upper West Side brownstone town house, with architecture that reflects the priciest of pricy New York abodes - large and expensive enough for three or four young professionals to live in, and they'd still have to live off of ramen a few times per week. Meg attained her home via the money-grubbing divorcee route, with real estate revenge as her sole purpose for even choosing the Richie Rich option in housing.



In this ridiculously large home in which Meg and her daughter have ten times the room they truly need, there is no real need to furnish the house. Instead, Meg is worried about her WASPish needs such as finding the corkscrew for her wine bottle, how to steal more money from her ex-husband, and, oh yeah, making sure she has enough diabetes medicine for her daughter. On top of all the other opulence, they have a luxury above all other needless luxuries: a panic room. This panic room is the amenity of all amenities, and for only the filthy rich. It acts as a barricade for an extended period of time for any and all rich occupants, and via its Ft. Knox security and armaggedon stockage, all rich occupants remain safe from all non-rich people.



In the case of this movie, I was kind of hoping that the criminals would win because the money and security clearly wasn't earned. However, the three criminals in his movie aren't that lucky. Burnham (Forest Whitaker) is a safe-cracking, goofy-as-hell yet somehow intelligent role tailor made for Forest Whitaker. Junior (Jared Leto) is the ADD-riddled, get rich quick bad element generically typical in every psychological thriller. And Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) is the heartless psychopath of the group, ubiquitous to this type of movie. While fighting for power and control, the criminals build tension and suspense, allowing the viewer to not only choose sides between Meg and the villians, but also amongst the villians themselves.



Generic maternal instinct provides determination enough to thwart the bad guys in a foreshadowed Lavergne and Shirley meets Jackass style of female empowerment ending. I knew the ending about halfway through, but it didn't suffer a loss of entertainment value as a result. Good movie.