# Panic (2000)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    PANIC

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     Roxie Releasing
     Director: Henry Bromell
     Writer:  Henry Browell
     Cast: William H. Macy, Neve Campbell, Donald Sutherland,
    Tracey Ullman, John Ritter, David Dorfman, Barbara Bain

How many times have you heard this conversation today?

       "How are you?"
       "I'm OK...how are you?"
       "I'm OK...how's the family?"
       "They're OK.  Yours?"

Five times? Ten? Twenty? In a book she published some years back, Sisela Bork stated that the average American lies about twenty time a day. If so, this sort of conversation must be the most common practice. In fact I've seen people at the dentist's waiting for a root canal who are asked by the receptionist, "How are you today?" The answer? You guessed it. Alex (William H. Macy) is so not-OK in Henry Bromell's "Panic," that even when he sits on the couch for the first time with his psychotherapist he says "I'm OK." Truth to tell he's not OK, and neither are his parents Michael (Donald Sutherland) and Deidre (Barbara Bain), his delightfully precocious six-year-old child Sammy (David Dorfman), his wife Martha (Tracey Ullman), his would-be girl friend Sarah (Neve Campbell), and in a more physical sense his shrink (John Ritter). The picture itself is not simply OK: It approaches the dimensions of a small masterpiece with Henry Bromell's taut, serpentine script at several points allowing Bill Macy to sound like a character out of David Mamet (for which Macy's is the expert), exquisite ensemble acting particularly by Macy and by the enchanting little David Dorfman, and Brian Tyler's unobtrusive soundtrack. Artisan's panic is Roxie's catch: the distinguished studio that's given us such cutting edge films as "The Blair Witch Project," "Pi," "Requiem for a Dream," "The Buena Vista Club," and "Cecil B. Demented," passed up a terrific opportunity by heeding the reaction of a focus group that must have been having a bad day and dropping the project. Picked up by Roxie, "Panic" has already played on Cinemax cable back in August and should enjoy a solid release this year on the big screen.

Speaking of cable, "Panic" summons up recent memories of the hit HBO show "The Sopranos," which featured its principal character Tony Soprano as a guy who, like Macy's Alex, must come to grips with a mid-life crisis. But unlike Soprano, Alex does tell his therapist about the family business--which leads to a tense series of dangerous confrontations with the head doctor and forces the patient to make a dramatic existential decision. "Panic" focuses on the man who is a diffident, even reluctant killer, trained by his father Michael from an early age to enter the family's sordid business. Michael is a hit man, understandably depressed from the time that his dad showed him a gun for the first time and coaxed him to shoot a squirrel. Giving the young man an opportunity for a human kill when Alex turns sixteen, Michael rewards the boy with a spirited pat on the back and a slice of the family affluence secured by a run of contracts from people unwilling to dirty their own hands with murder. When the chronically despondent Alex has his first session with the doctor, he finds that he comes alive not so much during his $125-an-hour meeting on the coach but from a bizarre conversation with a 23-year-old hairdresser, Sarah (Neve Campbell), who is a patient of another therapist in the same suite of offices. When his wife Martha gets confirmation of her husband's growing relationship with the young woman, a family crisis develops that pushes Michael into effecting a decisive change in his life.

Roger Ebert, who in a discussion of the movie with guest critic Joyce Kulhawk last June called this stunning movie "too smart" to be released nationally, will get his wish for more exposure when "Panic" opens on the big screen this year. A psychological suspense thriller of the first order, "Panic" achieves what a plethora of gangster films never approaches: a human-scale portrayal of the psyches of the mobsters, one which demonstrates that not all mercenaries are happy with their sordid work. While Macy is in virtually every scene, Bromell does a remarkable job of evoking a team spirit with his ensemble of crackerjack actors. Neve Campbell, known to teens for her roles in mock-horror flicks, never looked better nor has she ever been given dialogue more crackling than Bromell's. Sharp-tongued to hide her vunerabilities, Campbell's Sarah delivers repeated blows to Alex's ego while affording the disturbed killer an opportunity for redemption. As Martha, Tracey Ullman, playing against type as a melancholy housewife, provides a striking, dishwater contrast to Sarah's vibrant sexuality, while the fifty-year-old Bill Macy-- principally a stage actor who has had to wait quite a while before the film industry would give him major roles--furnishes his audience with a moving, resourceful performance as a murderer who is himself among the walking wounded.

Rated R. Running time: 88 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com

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