Dear Johnny Fanboy,

While watching Panic Room recently on DVD, I noticed something that I think could be a nit-pick.

The bad guys who want to get into the panic room don't want to hurt Jodie Foster's character, and if they could talk to her they would be able to tell her this. But they can't - she can talk to them via a PA system, but she can't hear what they are saying. However, towards the end of the movie, when Foster's character is outside the panic room and the bad guys are inside it, she goes over to an intercom in one of the rooms and presses a button to talk with them.

Now, one of the bad guys, the Forest Whitaker character, fits these rooms for a living (in fact he mentions that he fitted this one) so he would surely know about the two-way intercom. Why then does he not use it to talk to Foster near the start of the movie? OK, so it would have been a very short movie, or she may not have believed him, but it would have made more sense to have at least tried.

Yours,

Claudia Draper

Johnny Fanboy replies:

I would imagine that there's a lot of work involved in fitting out a panic room. You've got your reinforced doors, your hi-tech locks, your communications system, your ventilation... That's probably too much work for one person to manage alone, and a lot of different areas of expertise for one man to be an expert at.

It is true that Burnham (Forest Whitaker) brags about knowing everything there is to know about the panic room, but evidently he is exaggerating. So let's assume that although he was involved in fitting out the panic room, he was not personally involved in installing the intercom.

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