Overall Rating
  Awesome: 20.59%
Worth A Look: 36.27%
Just Average: 19.61%
Pretty Crappy: 12.75%
Sucks: 10.78%
9 reviews, 48 user ratings
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| Red Eye |
by WilliamPrice
"The feel-good terrorist assassination plot movie of the summer!"
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Lonely Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) is taking the late night flight back to Miami. Luckily, she’s just met a charming guy Jackson (Cillian Murphy), and as fate would have it, they find themselves sitting together for the flight. But Jackson’s charm wears off rather quickly when it turns out that he’s a manipulative, cunning terrorist. And if Lisa doesn’t help him, he’s going to have her daddy bumped off! Does this remind Lisa of the time two years ago when she was raped at knifepoint in a parking lot? Yup. It her new loathsome lothario going to get the butt-stomping he deserves by the time the credits roll? You betcha. Is the plot going to make any sense? Well, folks, two out of three aint bad!Red Eye plays like a clever joke whose teller knows exactly what he’s got. The first third of the film nonchalantly deals out a cliché round of characters from a deck that’s stacked to the hilt. We meet Lisa’s loving, slightly out-of-it father (Brian Cox), her ditzy co-worker from the Lux Atlantic Resort Hotel (Jayma Mays); and we get a mildly satirical look at the tuff-stuff talkin’ Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia). We also pick up a vague sense that all these folks, along with the midnight flight of “Fresh Air” airlines to Miami, are the focal point of some elaborate, mysterious and no doubt heinous terrorist plot.
For the film’s second third, we’re up in the air with Lisa, playing a claustrophobic game of cat and mouse against her increasingly impolite gentleman suitor. He’s trying to get her to make a fatal phone call to the Lux hotel, one that will allow his accomplices to assassinate Keefe. She struggles to outwit him, and the resulting back and forth interplay is great fun, even if it often defies logic. It’s kind of like Hitchcock for dummies. But since it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that, I’m not complaining.
Then it’s back to solid ground at last for the more kinetic stalk and chase finale. There’s nothing new here, but it’s never drags, and the final denouement is eminently satisfying.
In fact, all of the suspense and action sequences in Red Eye are largely routine, and border on the predictable. There are no mammoth special effects or signature gimmicks, and no attempt is made to amp up the thrills, the suffering or the violence beyond purely nominal levels. To do so would have done nothing but put the film out of balance and spoil the fun.
What really make the movie fly are the characters of Lisa and Jackson, and the bad blood between them. Rachel McAdams is perfect as the courteous, efficient young hotel receptionist Lisa. She is plucky and determined, although kind of drifting somewhat in the wake of her parent’s recent divorce. Not really on the make, she nonetheless responds in her modest way to Jackson, during the short time she thinks he might be Mr. Right. Once things start going wrong, her fear and despair are palpable, but her cleverness and courage are sure to win everyone’s hearts. Cillian Murphy is mesmerizing as Jackson, a real stinker who can make himself appear oh-so sensitive and benign. The strange thing is that almost nothing he does makes any logical sense in the context of the terrorism plot. It seems like he was put on the earth for the sole purpose of molesting Lisa. Otherwise, why would he bother to chat her up at the airport when he already knows he’s going to sit next to her on the plane? And later, why doesn’t he contact his superiors immediately upon Lisa’s escape, instead of chasing after her like a lunatic? Oddly, this does not seem to undermine the coherency of the film one bit, at least not the way I experienced it.At 80 minutes, Red Eye is a film well within its means. Although it is technically an action-suspense film, its light feel and warm, almost cozy clichés result in something more like a comedy. It is compact and effortless, and for what it is, nearly perfect. The fact is that Wes Craven is a director with nothing more to prove, and with Red Eye, he proves it.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=12749&reviewer=407
originally posted: 08/20/05 03:21:31
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USA
19-Aug-2005 (PG-13)
DVD: 10-Jan-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
01-Sep-2005
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