Here's a take on the major Plotline points in the script: ACT ONE 1-10: Opening [Meg and Sarah view and agree to take the apartment] 14-18: The Hook [The home invasion by Junior, Burnham and Raoul] 24-30: The Lock [Meg and Sarah locked in the panic room, Bad Guys in the apartment] ACT TWO 35-37: Pinch I [Bad Guys figure out a plan using fuel tanks] 41-46: 1st Test [Propane fumes into the panic room] 52-54: Pinch II [Meg and Sarah try Morse Code with neighbor, no luck] 57-60: Transition [Meg retrieves cell phone, first exit from panic room] 64-67: Pinch III [Bad Guys cut off phone service as Meg calls Harris] 70-75: 2nd Test [Raoul kills Junior/Meg watches Bad Guys assault Harris] 78-80: Pinch IV [Bad Guys enter panic room with Sarah/Meg stuck outside] 88-92: All Is Lost [While Sarah suffers diabetic shutdown, Meg has to talk to cops] ACT THREE 94-96: On The Offensive [Meg gets a plan, marks off distance, 14 steps] 98-103: Final Struggle [Meg breaks through neighbor's wall, shootout, cops] 103-104: Denouement [Central Park Great Lawn with Meg and Sarah talking about moving to another apartment] As noted in my comments yesterday, Koepp piles on the action with several pinch points, basically every 7 pages, something significant happening. That's why they call it an action-thriller.

I don't have a real lot to add here. Yes, this is how I see the plot points and act breaks. As I mentioned in my general comments, I did find the plot points to be very predictable and orchestrated - to the point that about 25% through watching the film (before I'd looked at the script) I found my mind wandering a bit, wondering how they are goign to keep ratcheting up the tension when the woman and girl are separated from the intruders by this concrete and steel wall... and right away I just KNEW that there was going to be a sequence where, somehow, the intruders were going to be stuck inside the Panic Room. So the whole thing felt very orchestrated to me, like I could almost hear the writers discussing "What if...", and feeling like you already know every thing they are going to try (e.g. the cell phone) is going to fail at the last moment... because it must, in order to keep the tension up without ending the film (if the phone works - film's over, right?) Also, structurally it was just a pretty simple plot, not much in the way of subplots. There were hints of Burnham's story - gambling debts that have forced him into this game - but they were mere hints, no story there. Meg's ex-husband was a totally lost opportunity - there was so much more sub-plot potentional here, and nothing was followed up, nothing! In the film there was a small added obstacle of the new girlfriend answering the phone when Meg made the call out - but then she passed the phone to Harris and that was that. Meg and Harris had so much time to interact when he was injured, but nothing ever happened. Was their animosity between them, anger, regret, leftover tenderness??? We don't know. Meg's long conversation with the cops at the door, presumably within earshot of Harris and entirely about her phone call to Harris, was a totally missed opportunity - the subtext and complications and perhaps wistfulness or anger (on both her part and his) that could have been added here. Although Sarah's diabetes was a complication, I don't think even it was developed enough to call it a subplot. So, to me, as much as the whole story had the appropriately timed turning points etc., it all came out too linear and very predictable. Burnham's return at the end to shoot Raoul (in the film, not in the script) was about the only interesting twist to me. And with all of that said, I'll admit that my tastes in film are not for the standard Hollywood action-thrillers... so I know that I am not a typical North American film-goer. Action is fine with me - but linear and predictable is not so interesting to me, I'd like a bit more complexity.

I think the midpoint's a self-relevatory grunt from a newly forged warrior: She stands in the middle of the still-smoky panic room, breathing hard. She shouts, SCREAMS incomprehensibly, making no sense whatsoever. She stops, noticing the look Sarah is giving her. Wide-eyed admiring, frightened, you are an insane woman. Meg looks to herself. Her arm is signed, the hair burned off. The sleeve of her T-shirt is burned back to the shoulder. Her face is sooty, blackened. Meg GRUNTS, half frightened by herself.