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Film review

Short jab, powerful punch

Director Wes Craven keeps Red Eye lean and mean and in its place, making great entertainment that doesn't pretend to be anything else.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published August 18, 2005

Wes Craven spins a preposterous yarn in no-nonsense fashion in Red Eye, a thriller with the uncommon good sense to get off the screen before anyone has time to figure out the plot holes.

Eighty minutes (not counting end credits) is all this story deserves and all Craven is willing to invest. That's unusual creative restraint deserving applause, if moviegoers stop gripping their armrests for a few seconds. Red Eye, like the similarly taut Phone Booth and Nick of Time in recent years, knows its place among movies. Such awareness raises it to another level of esteem.

It also helps to have an engaging central presence such as Rachel McAdams, whose performances in this film, Mean Girls, The Notebook and Wedding Crashers mark the arrival of a talented movie star. She plays Lisa Reisert, a woman so together that she can run her Miami hotel by cell phone while traveling. That skill makes her a target for purposely vague terrorists attempting to assassinate a U.S. homeland security official.

Explaining the bad guys is one of the conscientious edits in Carl Ellsworth's screenplay, one of the few you'll see these days that reportedly hasn't been "polished" by other writers. That tactic often makes the story erratic, or misguided - too many cooks spoiling a broth. Red Eye has a singular purpose Craven and Ellsworth fully agree upon, and it makes a difference onscreen.

Lisa is returning to Miami on a red-eye flight after her grandmother's funeral in Dallas. The short flight is just long enough for another passenger, Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy) to flirt his way into her confidence, then betray it. Jackson is part of a hit team pressuring Lisa to make arrangements to make the assassination easier. If she doesn't cooperate, there's another killer waiting outside the home of her father (Brian Cox).

How simple, yet in the hands of Craven, how satisfying. Nothing will be spoiled here, but the filmmaker makes the most of frequent flier cliches: the sweet old lady, the young pranksters, the cute kid, the pushy passenger, etc. They add comic relief and pieces of a solution at precisely the right times. When the action disembarks on terra firma, Jayma Mays picks up where they left off, playing Lisa's shell-shocked hotel assistant, dealing with bullying guests and mayhem.

Essentially, though, this is a two-character thriller. McAdams once again makes a normally bland character someone interesting. Murphy, who seemed out of place in Batman Begins, reclaims some respect with his suavely sinister performance. Red Eye is solid, unpretentious B-movie entertainment; nothing more and, thankfully, never anything less.

Grade: B

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jayma Mays, Angela Paton

Screenplay: Carl Ellsworth

Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity

Running time: 85 min.

[Last modified August 17, 2005, 12:53:06]