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RED EYE Send This Review to a Friend
If you see “Red Eye” you may gaze suspiciously at the stranger seated beside you on your next flight, especially if he looks a bit like Cillian Murphy, who plays Jackson Rippner in Wes Craven’s tightly plotted and immensely entertaining thriller. Occupying the seat beside him on a Miami-bound flight is Rachel McAdams as Lisa, who soon learns she is being imprisoned by Rippner in a terrorist plot to kill a bigwig.
The two became friendly while waiting to check in. Being seated together is not a coincidence. Lisa works as a customer relations executive for a fancy Miami hotel. Rippner is demanding that she make a call to transfer the well-guarded target and his family into a suite with windows exposed to firing range of men on a small craft lurking in Miami’s waters. His hold over her is having a hit man is poised outside her father’s house to kill him if she doesn’t comply.
Craven, working from a screenplay by Carl Ellsworth based on a story by Ellsworth and Dan Foos, uses his expertise to create a steady beat of tension, from the early set up to the life-and-death climax. Details and minor characters are blended into the suspense that builds. Ultimately it comes down to the Lisa’s inner resources and strength and her determination to stop Rippner, foil the plot and save her dad. It’s a tall order for anyone, but McAdams is a delight as she desperately tries to turn the tables.
There is a point at which the plot asks us not to believe that she would get help from airport security instead of turning into a female James Bond, with the overkill of hand-to-hand combat at the climax, but if she took the former course there would be less excitement and no nail-biting finale. We know everything must turn out right. But “Red Eye” is such a sharply honed thriller that it has the power to keep an audience tautly in its grasp and stands as an especially skillful model of the suspense genre.
And here’s a cheer for the performance by Jayma Mays as Cynthia, the bewildered hotel employee who must blindly follow orders to carry out Lisa’s desperate cell phone demands. It’s a minor role, but one for which she should be remembered. A DreamWorks Pictures release.
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