Movie Review: Red Eye

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Country: USA
Release Date: August 19, 2005

Movie Review: Red Eye
by Max Braden
Published: August 19, 2005

Distributor:	Director:	Writers:	Cast:
Dreamworks Pictures	Wes Craven	Story & Screenplay: Carl Ellsworth Story: Dan Foos	Rachel McAdams as Lisa Cillian Murphy as Jackson Brian Cox as Joe Reisert Jayma Mays as Cynthia
For more information: IMDb Link

The premise sounds thrilling: the passenger sitting next to you on an overnight flight suddenly makes an offer you can't refuse. You are kidnapped in plain sight, forced to make a decision that will lead to the death of at least one person. But though it combines elements of movies such as "Collateral," "Turbulence," "Passenger 57," "Air Force One" and "Cellular," Wes Craven's new thriller "Red Eye" barely adds up to more than a short thesis project. Rachel McAdams is easy to watch yet again, and there are some thrills for the genre fan, but this movie is hardly worth a moviegoer's time.

Rachel McAdams ("The Notebook," "Wedding Crashers") plays Lisa Reisert, a young hospitality director for a major hotel in Miami. Leaving for home from a funeral in Texas, the movie opens with her rushing to the airport to catch the last flight of the night - the 'red eye' of the film's title. Lisa is a multitasker, used to dealing with high stress in a calm and rational manner. We see her easily defuse a couple of testy hotel guests by phone when her pleasant but somewhat frazzled assistant Cynthia, played by Jayma Mays (her first feature role) gets overwhelmed. Lisa is clearly independent, but still daddy's little girl. He, played by Brian Cox ("The Bourne Supremacy") is home remodeling the house and adjusting to the permanent absence of Mrs. Reisert. Dad must think his daughter can do everything but land a man, as he has slipped yet another Dr. Phil book into her luggage.

Rachel McAdams as Lisa and Cillian Murphy as Jackson
wasting precious onscreen time in between thrills.

As it turns out, Lisa meets a charming man - Cillian Murphy ("Batman Begins") - with the creepy name Jack(son) Rippner and they do a little flirting at an airport bar while waiting to board the plane. Creepy/charming Jackson also happens to be her seatmate on the plane, and distracts her with personal questions while she white-knuckles the seat during a turbulent takeoff. Sparing us from a creepy romantic comedy plotline, Jackson lays out a terrifying revelation: he's been hired by terrorists to help them kill the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, who is staying in Lisa's hotel. If Lisa makes the call to transfer him from his regular room to the target room, Jackson will call off the hitman currently parked outside her father's house.

After a few thwarted attempts to alert someone, Lisa is resigned to the fact that she must make the call to Cynthia to have the Deputy Secretary and his family moved. The Deputy Secretary's wife suggests they just go to the backup hotel so the kids can sleep, but the Deputy Secretary (played by television actor Jack Scalia) okays the move, and his entourage of Secret Service bodyguards proceed to take the entire rest of the night and most of the following morning to do a security check on the new suite. The terrorists' plan here is to launch a missile from a boat off the coastland hotel. Who they are and where they came from is never addressed, but it's clear they are responding to the Deputy Secretary's recent aggressive statements, sounding suspiciously familiar to President Bush's July 2003 "Bring it on" challenge. Lisa has to find a way to get off the plane and save her father and the Deputy Secretary.

Jack Scalia plays the target Dep. Sec. of Homeland Security.

The sparseness of this plot element is an example of one of the major problems with the movie. Screenwriter Carl Ellsworth (whose previous credits are all television-based, with episodes from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Xena: Warrior Princess" has the beats of the genre right and the broad strokes are there, but is missing the background details that flesh out a feature film. Missing so much, in fact that excluding credits, we get little more than an hour and fifteen minutes of story time. I checked my watch a half dozen times when the end credits started rolling, wondering if perhaps it was just intermission. "Red Eye" may have well been an hour long episode from an action series like "24". We don't get the deep insight to the predator and prey that we did in last year's "Collateral." And though the ease of launching a boat-based attack seems realistically frightening, using a third party revealing himself to someone with only the pressure of duress to ensure the plan's success is too sloppy to be believed. Tom Cruise's hitman used Jamie Foxx's character because it was convenient, but it wasn't absolutely necessary. Even the hitman outside Joe Reisert's house is frustratingly amateurish.

The other major problem with the movie is just an overall appearance of cheap production values. The exterior flight shots look like they were taken from a spoof film like "Airplane!" I'd hope if the producers at Dimension had seen the dailies that they might have pumped more money into the set. Director Wes Craven scored big by making the most of small budget horror films like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" in the 1980s and the "Scream" series in the 1990s. His prior films used unsettling atmosphere to create some classic nailbiting moments. "Red Eye" delivers some stress during the plane flight scenes, and a decent chase scene at the end, but it doesn't measure up to Craven's past accomplishments. Composer Marco Beltrami, who worked on the "Scream" movies as well as Craven's "Cursed" this year, also delivered a score that didn't do much to enhance the story tension.

Jayma Mays as the in-over-her-head Cynthia.

Despite the lack of substance in "Red Eye" Rachel McAdams treats her role as a serious one and doesn't fail to come across as a convincing damsel in distress. Starting with the comedies "The Hot Chick" and "Mean Girls," moving on to romance in "The Notebook" and "Wedding Crashers," covering a thriller such as this one seems like it can only help her on the path to major stardom. Irish actor Cillian Murphy was probably first noticed by American audiences in the cult horror hit "28 Days Later." 2005 will be considered his breakout year, having also appeared in "Batman Begins" as the villain Scarecrow. In that movie and "Red Eye," his bright-eyed boyish and slightly feminine features remind me of one of those rich high school jerks from a 1980s movie. Though he plays a good snake, the chemistry we'd want to see between him and McAdams never really ignites. Of the minor roles, Jayma Mays is best, punching up her few scenes with slightly ditzy, pleasantly breezy comic relief.

Grade: D+ Borderline C-. Not really worth the time or money spent going to the theater.

Rated PG-13 for violence and language
1 hr 25 min.
US Theatrical release: August 19, 2005, wide
Official Website
CinemaSpider

...And Then What Happens?
-Rachel McAdams currently costars in "Wedding Crashers," still in wide release;
-Jodie Foster deals with her own thrilling "Flightplan" in theaters Sept. 23;
-McAdams appears in the familial comedy "The Family Stone" in early November;
-Cillian Murphy appears in "Batman Begins" coming to DVD in mid October;
-Brian Cox appears in Woody Allen's "Match Point" this Christmas;
-Look for a remake of Craven's 1977 horror "The Hills Have Eyes", as well as his new screenplay "Pulse", in March;

Also opening this week: "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" | "Valiant" | "Red Eye" (review by Scott Wyatt)

Related Articles: "Wedding Crashers" review (Juba) | "Cursed" review (Price)

Max's 2005 Ratings | 2005 Movie Planner

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