Red Eye Review
by Mark Leeper (mleeper AT optonline DOT net)August 28th, 2005
RED EYE
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Wes Craven's RED EYE delivers a good tense 85 minutes. The film mostly works and the thriller plot is reasonably believable. The problem is that this film has nothing particularly new and original to make it stand out from the thrillers like, for
example, Larry Cohen writes. The film needs a
little more flair to stand out as a memorable
experience. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
As a thriller RED EYE is a lot like the mailman. On one hand it really delivers the goods. But on the other someone delivers the goods nearly every day of the week. This is a nice taut little thriller. Director Wes Craven keeps it brief enough so that the non-stop suspense does not let up. The whole story takes place in no more than seven or eight hours. The film is not like a James Bond film with one action sequence illogically following after another and robbing from the effect of the next sequence. The plan of RED EYE's baddies is not some complex chess gambit that you have to put together in the lobby after the film. This is a good compelling thriller. That is the upside. The downside is that we get a lot of nice taut suspense films. RED EYE is a nice thriller, but no better or worse than, for example, CELLULAR. Maybe it was a little better than PHONE BOOTH.
Rachel McAdams plays Lisa Reisert, a young attractive hotel clerk (or perhaps the manager of clerks), who has taken the day off to fly to Texas to attend the funeral of her grandmother. Of course in the age of the cell phone she cannot really take the day entirely off. Her nervous replacement is in frequent touch with her for help and advice. Reisert is also on the phone to her retired father (played by Brian Cox in a lamentably small role).
Now Reisert is taking the red-eye flight back to Miami. Seeing customers verbally abuse the airline clerks touches a nerve with her. Stepping in to defend them she finds an ally in the attractive guy behind her in line. This turns out to be Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy of BATMAN BEGINS). The two make friends and happen to sit next to each other on the plane. Reisert soon discovers that their meeting and their sitting together is no coincidence and the two are soon engaged in a life-and-death struggle involving an assassination attempt.
This film taps into the real-world discomfort of flying known only to well to us coach fliers. Films like AIRPORT and THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY frequently show planes as roomy and comfortable. Our characters have trouble getting seats in the first place. Then when they have the seats the narrow aisles, the cramped seats, and the high unreachable luggage racks help to make the tension seems even more painful. The characters are isolated in the sky with very little freedom to move around. Carl Ellsworth's screenplay takes (nearly) full advantage of the annoyances of flying. The screenplay loses a few points because of cliches like the little girl flying alone who is treated by the staff like a princess. The main characters seem to find it too easy to steal objects from other passengers in a crowded plane. One more problem is that the final chapter turns too much into a standard damsel in distress from a stalker plot. In a film that is not sufficiently original, the final reel is the most cliched.
I like my thrillers with a little more verve than this one has. Wes Craven is no Alfred Hitchcock. On the other hand I think this film works considerably better than many of the films he makes in his home genre, namely horror. The film does succeed in maintaining tension. I rate RED EYE a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. (Are there really red-eye flights between two states so close? Maybe it was West Texas. I don't think we are told.)
Mark R. Leeper
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Copyright 2005 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
