David Fincher completism. This was his followup to Fight Club. Also a Jodie Foster jag from A Very Long Engagement and for Forest Whitaker. Jared Leto and a very young Kristen Stewart co-star.
The format is what's written on the tin: Foster and daughter Stewart, freshly cashed up after separating from their philandering pharmaceutical husband/father, move in to a huge Manhattan "townstone" that includes (wait for it) a panic room that only Foster is perceptive enough to notice. They buy it off some rich old dead guy who just happened to leave (let me not spoil the wild lack of inventiveness for you) something valuable on the premises. In the spirit of Home Alone or maybe Die Hard and certainly not Ghost Dog three highly-characterised crooks try to recover the precious while the residents freak out.
There were absolutely no stakes on the table for me. Apart from Whitaker the males were different kinds of useless: Leto is histrionic, the ex-husband inert, Dwight Yoakam too quick with the ultraviolence. IMDB tells me that Nicole Kidman was supposed to star, and it is possible that she may have improved things. David Koepp got $4M for the script. The lighting is (somewhat necessarily) weird. Overall as drecky and inert as I expected.
Roger Ebert: three stars. It's internally consistent, but I have to say I'd take something exciting over that. But what about the BBQ gas scenes? A. O. Scott suggests that if you don't envy their abode you're a long way from the target demographic. Nobody's home.