Sara (Michelle Monaghan), the world's sexiest war photojournalist… sorry Christine Amanpour… is snapping some pictures in Afghanistan or someplace like that when it hits the fan. The soldiers tell Sara to watch herself, but the girl is dead set on doing her job. Until she sees the woman holding the cute baby. Get away from the baby Sara! Oh well. One would've thought, considering the proximity of the blast, that in addition to losing her eyesight Sara's face and a large portion of her body would be charred, or dead, but physics dictates that this face is far too cute to burn.
Fast forward a few years where Sara is living in New York, fully adjusted to life as a vision impaired individual. Life isn't so bad for Sara as she lives in a dope penthouse apartment with her awesome boyfriend Ryan (Andrew Walker) who takes real good care of her, and she gets around just fine, though sometimes she seems to forget she's blind and forgets her cane and stuff. At the moment, it's New Years Eve, Sara's pregnant sister Blake (Tiio Horn) and her husband Danny (Trevor Hayes) are planning a visit so Sara makes quick trip to corner mart to pick a few items before the intimate gathering.
Problem is when Sara gets back, her awesome boyfriend is nowhere to be found. Well, he is easy to find actually, and if Sara could see she'd observe him lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, with some weird dude hanging out in the background watching Sara putz around the apartment. Eventually this dude reveals himself, Chad (Barry Sloane), and Chad proceeds to terrorize poor Sara until she tells him where it is. What is 'it'? Now I don't know how these things work in real life, but in the movies the terrorizer never tells the terrorizee what 'it' is. Like they're supposed to know. Imagine how much easier life would be if the thug just said 'Hey, where's the money?' or 'Where's the body' or whatever.
Obviously Sara doesn't know what this dude is talking about, but despite her blindness, the girl is quite resourceful and she manages to free herself from his tyrannical grip, only to get tricked into getting assistance from the tyrannical grip of Chad's boss Hollander (Michael Keaton) who informs Sara that her awesome boyfriend wasn't quite as awesome as she thought he was. He too plays the 'Where is it?' game with Sara, and Sara still doesn't what the hell they are talking about, which gets her abused and tortured some more.
Things are looking pretty bad for poor Sara right now with her pregnant sister and bro-in-law still en route and the abuse picking up, so she had best tell these clowns something they want to hear. And failing that, Sara does have one thing over these two psychos, that being she's a sexy, manipulative minx. If Sara wants to survive this night, she's going to have to use that ability to turn these two dudes against each other, which shouldn't be all that difficult since they seem to hate each other already. Generic thrills shall ensue.
Directed by Joseph Ruben, 'Penthouse North' is… well… generic. It is a film that is competent, decently acted, paced in a fashion that keeps the audience from drifting off… but it's also terribly predictable and completely paint-by-numbers. It is the type of movie, that if you are charged with writing something about it, the sooner you write this something the better because 'Penthouse North' is also completely forgettable. There is nothing especially poor about this film, but there is nothing particularly stellar either, with any surprises, of which there aren't many, pretty much ruined by the trailer. A generic, mediocre thriller.
That being said, generic and mediocre is better than awful. It is more fun to write about awful stuff than mediocre stuff, but at least we have that. The movie is slick looking, Michelle Monaghan is always fun to look at and she made for a fine damsel in distress, and we would pay good money to watch Michael Keaton eat breakfast, and as we mentioned earlier, it's not like the movie is dull or anything, just rudimentary. Considering the talent involved, we were hoping to get just a little bit from 'Penthouse North' than rudimentary.
SPOILER ALERT - Real quick like, and close the page if you haven't seen the movie because it is pretty critical to the plot, but if you lived in the house with a blind woman, would you put the diamonds you stole in an ice tray? Even if you slid that Ice Tray at the bottom of the other trays? I guess my first question would be 'why doesn't this fancy high rise penthouse spread have a fridge with an automatic ice maker', but it doesn't. Thus I'd be scared to death that my blind girlfriend, in need of a frosty beverage, might grab that ice tray and drink my stolen diamonds. Thus I am also forced to ask why the blind girlfriend, after all is said and done, would put these diamonds back in the ice tray. She can't live there anymore since the rent payer is all dead now, and she's gonna look really strange packing up her stuff and grabbing ice trays out the freezer. Unless she just wants to leave them there. I don't know. Just curious all. Still mediocre.
