30 Second Bottom Line: A 40-ish hit man, with the looks and demeanor of a corporate executive, is depressed with his way of making a living. When he seeks help from a psychiatrist, he meets a young woman who makes him feel alive again. At home, his wife and six-year-old son sense he is with them physically but not mentally or emotionally. His employer, who is also his father, will do whatever it takes to keep him in the family business.
Story Line: Michael (Donald Sutherland) looks like a retired business executive living in suburbia whose joy in life is to spend time at the local diner making small talk. His real job is as the sales manager for assassination contracts for his son Alex (William H. Macy).
When Alex was a young boy just barely able to hold a gun, his father Michael showed him how to use it. Instead of paper targets, they would shoot small animals. By the time Alex was in his early 20's, Dad had shown him how to kill by not looking the person in the eye, walking away quickly (never run), using gloves and taking them off as you leave. It's a family business that Michael and his wife Deidre (Barbara Bain) cherish like a company passed to each generation with ever-increasing pride. Mom and Dad know what Alex does but his wife Martha (Tracy Ullman) does not.
Alex is having his mid life crisis, which makes him feel so numb that he has no sexual desire for his attentive wife. He is disgusted with himself for being a professional killer and decides to seek counseling by going to a psychiatrist, Dr. Josh Parks (John Ritter). While in the waiting room Alex meets another patient named Sarah (Neve Campbell). She's a 23 year-old woman and when their eyes meet he experiences a strange sensation. He tells Dr. Parks that when he looks at her "I don't feel dead anymore."
Sarah and Alex are attracted to each other for different reasons. Alex knows he needs something and he's sure Sarah can give it to him. He knows he will never leave his wife and does not keep that a secret. But if Martha never finds out about the affair and they don't fall in love, What's the harm? While Alex quickly determines that he is hungry for Sarah, she is not so sure that he will do anything but continue to forestall the beginning of her life.
Sarah is a tease who turns ideas into action. She has slept with plenty of women but when a good looking young hunk approaches her at a bar, after first putting him down, she's soon doing the nasty with him and loving it.
Alex is now teaching his young son Sammy (David Dorfman) about life. He is not, however, teaching him to be a criminal. Often a dark story will have seedy looking characters who live in trailer parks and whose social behavior is an obvious time bomb (e.g., Boy's Don't Cry). Here we have "apple pie" characters, in a well to do area, who seemingly are in control of their social habits. With Sarah's neurosis and Alex's depression, we know that the outcome will have some tragic overtones. The only question is, How bad will the fallout be?
Tell Me More About It: If American Beauty was a dark comedy Panic should initiate the term "midnight comedy." There are moments of humor but it's the kind of laugh you make when you want to groan.
One sequence that lends a very dark edge to the film is the method by which Michael indoctrinates his son into killing. At the young age of six, he teaches Alex to kill squirrels with a pistol.
It's next to impossible for a six-year-old to hold a pistol and hit a squirrel on the second try. When I was a kid, your introduction to guns was with rifles rather than pistols. You have a much better chance of hitting the target using a rifle in the prone position rather than standing up with a pistol gripped in an outstretched arm. And you shoot at targets first rather than animals.
As in the film The Last Seduction, normal people can do not so normal things that result in the death of others.
Sammy is the bright bulb in the story in that he's a very smart six-year-old who knows that his dad is not a happy man and wonders if his parents will soon get a divorce. He thinks about this before they even have an argument. David Dorfman is actually better at conveying these adult concerns than Rory Culkin as the young boy in You Can Count on Me. In looking at his father and grandfather, you can really understand the phrase, "children are our future."
Foreshadowing usually serves as a spoiler, but here it makes the film just that much sweeter. When Alex is in Parks's office, he feels it's important for him to know the rules between doctor and patient. The doctor can't convey information on crimes in the past but is legally obligated to tell the authorities about crimes that may be committed in the future. This leads to Parks going to see Detective Larson (Miguel Sandoval) who while skeptical, decides to follow Alex. Michael has always cautioned Alex not to look into the eyes of his victims when he shoots them. Later that eye contact becomes very important.
The new favorite character in this genre environment is the clueless dependent housewife, who has to deal with a trouble-making husband. In Traffic, the husband was a drug dealer and the wife knew nothing about it until he was arrested. The wife in The Insider was so self centered on her upper class suburban life style that the sins of the tobacco executives prevented her from supporting her husband when he was ready to take a moral stand. Here, Ullman flips 180 degrees in her wife role from Woody' Allen's Small Time Crooks. There she had a take charge posture; here she is the dutiful spouse who sums up her needs by saying to Alex, "...touch me, kiss me, …k me," before she gets up from the sofa in disgust.
Without a doubt Panic does a wonderful job of treating the romance between a twenty something woman and a man old enough to be her father. When people are just getting by, looking for something they can't describe, it's always a surprise when they find it. If they are smart, they give it some thought, and decide to smell the roses while they can.
Michael says, "Destiny is who you really are…who you are meant to be…." For many of us our destiny is determined by others and we're told it's our Promised Land. We think the trip is worthwhile until we get there and find out it's a barren desert.
This more than anything else may be what causes mid life crises in working people, be they hit men or a salesman at Coca Cola. When you wake up one day and don't like what you have done with your life so far, nor have good prospects of the future, you need to reach out for help. It might be a psychiatrist or it may be a mistress. One or both may help, but it's like putting a band-aid over a bullet wound in the chest. It may help stop the bleeding but the patient will die unless something more fundamental is done.
The story around Panic is almost as interesting as the film itself. It generated a lot of excitement a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival (Jan 2000) and was expected to hit the art house circuit without a problem. Heck, a solid suspense story with the edge of a Fargo and an all-star ensemble cast should be a no brainer. After doing a test screening with a focus group (which includes people who primarily are interested in popcorn films like Charlie's Angels, Meet the Parents, and The Perfect Storm) who gave negative feedback, the film was promptly dropped for a theatrical release. It premiered on cable TV just like The Last Seduction. Hopefully Panic will do as well on the big screen as The Last Seduction because it is a film worthy of our attention.
Hollywood studios are not the only culprits to take good movies straight to video, which is the easy way to put money in their pockets. This is the ugly side of independent filmmaking.
Pick any actor you like in this film and you'll love their performance. Barbara Bain still has the Mission Impossible (1960's) edge of coolness. Donald Sutherland is like the Godfather who has an "ah shucks" demeanor. Tracey Ullman is the middle age housewife that nobody cares about. Neve Campbell knows how to get what she wants and needs for today but can't get her arms around how to prepare for tomorrow. And William H. Macy has finally made a film after Fargo, which builds on a good man with flawed character. Let's just hope it plays in enough theaters for other films of this quality to be made in the future. Without that if you think last year was a downer for films, there are a few more trapdoors yet to open.
Mini Filmography
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