Over the weekend, I went to see Panic Room. If you like, you can read my thoughts in the little “Seen Recently” sidebar over there to the left. Personally, I like what Roger Ebert had to say about the film, which should come as no surprise since I tend to agree with Ebert on a lot of films and can usually understand where he’s coming from when we don’t. He writes:
The end game in chess, for the student of the sport, is its most intriguing aspect. The loss of pieces has destroyed the initial symmetry and created a skewed board — unfamiliar terrain in which specialized pieces are required to do jobs for which they were not designed. There is less clutter; strategy must run deeper because there are fewer alternative lines. Sacrifices may be brilliant, or they may be blunders, or only apparent blunders. Every additional move limits the options, and the prospect of defeat, swift and unforeseen, hangs over the board. That is exactly the way “Panic Room” unfolds, right down to the detail that even at the end the same rules apply, and all the choices that were made earlier limit the choices that can be made now.