Das Penthouse

The storyline in "Penthouse North" was fairly generic and predictable, but it still made for an entertaining enough movie. However, it is not the type of movie that you watch more than once.

The story is about a war photographer by the name of Sara, who loses her eyesight while on assignment. Years later, living a reclusive life with her boyfriend, Sara comes home to find her boyfriend murdered and the killer still in the apartment.

Story-wise then "Penthouse North" wasn't particularly innovative or outstanding, but it was entertaining enough for what it turned out to be. It was adequately paced, but didn't really have many 'edge-of-your-seat' moments, which a good thriller should have.

What made the movie watchable was the acting performances of Michelle Monaghan and Michael Keaton.

There are far better and exciting thrillers available, but "Penthouse North" is still worth giving a chance. Who knows, it might just be what you have been looking for.

Let's not beat around the bush: PENTHOUSE NORTH is a modernized rip-off of WAIT UNTIL DARK. Both movies have the same core premise: a woman blinded in an accident (or in this case, a terrorist attack) is terrorized in her NYC apartment by criminals out to find stolen goods brought to her home, only she does not know where they are. Unfortunately for PENTHOUSE NORTH, despite more overt violence, it isn't even an eighth as scary as the older movie, which brilliantly built to a chilling confrontation in the dark and culminated in actual development for the traumatized, insecure protagonist played with real warmth and vulnerability by Audrey Hepburn. Heck, PENTHOUSE NORTH's not even as memorable as other thrillers which also used this concept in the past fifty years. SEE NO EVIL and HUSH are also superior thrillers about women with disabilities in peril, mainly because they are actually, well, thrilling. PENTHOUSE NORTH's highest dramatic moment is when Michael Keaton throws a cat off a roof. That's how lacking in tension this movie is.

The biggest problem with this movie is that the heroine's disability feels needless. Aside from one or two scenes with the men hiding around when she thinks she is alone, Sarah could have been just a woman with sight and the movie would have largely played out the same. The Afghanistan prologue and flashbacks are beyond pointless: the main action takes place three years after Sarah is blinded, by which time she's adjusted to her condition, more or less, making me wonder why the war-scene flashbacks are necessary since they lead to no significant character development or revelations. Aside from learning her boyfriend is a criminal (or... did she? The ending scene suggests she might have known... I think??), Sarah does not change or grow.

The thrills are mostly predictable and the villains are basic types. The character Chad is presented like a scary psychopath, but he's more of a dumb thug, and Michael Keaton phones it in as the smooth-talking brains of the criminal duo. There's not much of a cat-and-mouse game going on between Sarah and her assailants: it's mostly them torturing/groping/threatening her, then she briefly finds a means of escaping, only to be recaptured, rinse and repeat. Stakes don't build. Sarah never changes as a character. Nothing.

And that's this movie as a whole: a generic waste of time that can't even rise to the level of so bad it's good.

Michelle Monaghan and Michael Keaton star in "Blindsided," a 2013 straight-to-video film coproduced by Keaton for reasons known only to him.

Monaghan plays a former photojournalist, Sara, who was blinded by a suicide bomber while covering a war and still suffers from PTSD. If she didn't suffer from it, she would have been by the time the action in this film finished.

On New Year's Eve, the man she is living with, Ryan (Andrew Walker) is killed by a former associate from whom he stole a fortune in diamonds. Sara has been out, and it takes her a while after she returns home to stumble across the body, and the perpetrator (Barry Sloane) is still in the apartment. He is joined by the brains of the organization, Hollander (Keaton) and together they try by various sadistic means to find out where the loot is.

This is really cliché-ridden claptrap, derivative, predictable, and how dare anyone compare it to Wait Until Dark. You know every move the villains are going to make. What's more, you know where the diamonds are hidden. You also know what the end of the film is going to be. It's all too obvious.

Michael Keaton does a terrific job, but this is a generic mean guy role. Michelle Monaghan does okay, but these are all generic characters there to serve the predictable action.

There were a lot of holes in this thing. First off, why not look for the diamonds in the apartment? Or a key to a safe deposit box? How do you know Sara knows where they are? Quite possibly she knows nothing of Ryan's past and therefore nothing about any theft. And what a place to hide them. If this had been shown in a theater, the entire place would be yelling out the hiding place.

Secondly - and this I really didn't understand - this is a 2013 release. Okay, Sara gets into a room and locks the door. She gets on her computer, which takes vocal commands. And she's going to send an email. Well, I hope the person is checking messages.

No cell phone with a quick connection to 911? A phone she can keep on so she can be found, should she not be able to get out her address? Though in the time it took her to get onto her email, she certainly could have.

The woman is blind, and all she has if she needs help is a computer where she can e-mail someone? We know she had one while she was out. I think someone physically challenged would have it on her at all times.

I can't go on. Skip this movie. Rent Wait Until Dark where an entire audience screamed OUT LOUD at one part. They would have screamed here too - at the box office for their money back.

I'm old enough to remember being scared silly by Audrey Hepburn's movie of the 60's - a blind woman being terrorized for something her husband stole. The hand grabbing her ankle still makes me screech. This movie is nothing original but still suspenseful in a more current way - more violence, more sexual threat. However, a huge plot hole - a dead body STINKS. Blood stinks, a body "letting go" in death stinks, a sweaty killer stinks. Also, if she could hear the guy on the balcony at the end, why couldn't she hear (or smell or feel) a guy standing a foot in front of her?

You might like this movie if you enjoyed: Columbus Circle (1996), Brake (2012)

Long Story Short: Sarah (Michelle Monaghan), a former Military photojournalist, has lost her sight due to an incident in Afghanistan. She lives in a penthouse with her boyfriend Ryan (Andrew W. Walker) and feels safe there even though her sister (Kaniehtiio Horn) and brother-in law (Trevor Hayes) constantly tell her that they don't trust Ryan. It turns out that Ryan does have a secret and, which gets Sarah in great danger.

Review: I have never heard of that movie before but I thought I give it a shot, and it was not a bog let down, but I wasn't blown away either. The beginning is very strong and has a few "Edge- of- your- seat" – moments, but it doesn't keep this pace up, especially since there aren't any twists besides one tiny one at the beginning. I am not sure how her past of being a photojournalist in Afghanistan helped developing the story either, as far as I am concerned they didn't even have to mention why she was blind. All these flashbacks from her past seemed like fillers to me. The acting was decent, I saw a few nice skyscraper shots, but I was hoping for a big reveal at the end which didn't happen. Penthouse House is definitely a one- time watch but not a bad one.

Rating: 5.5