Red Eye

This film is what you get when you have two very talented actors in service of a really bad script. We have director Wes Craven starting the movie in a quite promising way, giving us time to get to know our two leads, with only a little heavy-handed foreshadowing, such as in the opening shot of the film the camera pans along a desk topped with photos of the film's heroine, and in one of these photos she is playing field hockey…so take a guess at what item she gets into her hot little hands to fight the bad guy for the film's climax. The major problem with the film is the plot that the villains have concocted could have been so easily thwarted by our heroine if she had used any common sense at all, and she is supposed to be some uber-hotel manager so you’d think she’d be able to think fairly fast on her feet.

The basic plot here is that Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) is taking the red-flight back to Miami, after going to her grandmother’s funeral, and she runs into a charming fellow traveller named Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy), and they seem to keep randomly bumping into each other, right up to the point where they find themselves sitting next to each other on the plane. Of course, these meetings are anything but coincidental, as Jackson quickly reveals to her that he is some globetrotting killer for hire, and he needs her help on his latest assignment. Apparently, the Deputy Director of Homeland Security is going to be staying at the hotel where she is manager, and they need her to make a call and have his room changed so Jackson's people can have better access to kill the Deputy Director.  And how could he possibly coerce an upstanding citizen to aid in such a crime?  Well, he simply tells her that there is a man sitting in a silver BMW outside her father's home, and if she doesn’t do as she is told he will call the man and her father (Brian Cox) will be killed. This is where the film's plot completely falls apart under this absurd premise, as it is a fact that Jackson is unarmed, and onboard a plane at 30,000 feet with only a phone to contact his associates, which leads us to the question...

 

“WHY DOESN’T SHE JUST SCREAM BLOODY MURDER!”

Instead, she tries to leave a note in another passenger's book, and in one of the most overused movie clichés she writes a note on the bathroom mirror (all of which are discovered and thwarted of course).  I lost count of the opportunities this dumb woman had to just run for help. Instead of going to the washroom why didn’t she just kept on going ahead to the cockpit, or to the stewardess station and inform them about this dangerous man, and find out if there was an air marshal on board. No matter how crazy you seem they will certainly hear you out, and one phone call would confirm that the Deputy Director is staying at the hotel she manages. Then all they would have to do is subdue Jackson, send the cops over to her father's place to arrest the guy in the BMW, which Jackson was so kind enough to describe to her, and the day is saved.  Sadly that is not what she does.

 

Thank god she had that field hockey stick handy.

Instead, we are treated to her running around being chased and fighting off Jackson in some of the most tedious action sequences ever put to film, and they even go so far as to have her fleeing through the airport, getting a car, and driving all the way to her dad’s house without once thinking of contacting the police or airport security, and sure they make some deal about the cellphone she has being low on batteries, but that she hides from the airport police makes no sense at all.  The performances are good but this is basically ninety minutes of filler trying to pretend to be a thriller.