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Starring: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Bryan Cox. Rated R. Wes
Craven’s Red Eye is an efficient
thriller that rides a simple, clever
idea for 85 strong minutes. It’s short and satisfying, and if it lacks the
scares normally associated with Craven’s signature works, Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street,
it lacks none of the suspense. Even as it winds to
a seemingly inevitable conclusion, it manages to keep the audience on edge with
its creepy, claustrophobic atmosphere and the tension between its stars, Rachel
McAdams and Cillian Murphy. McAdams plays Lisa, a senior
hotel executive traveling on a late-night flight to Miami, where she will
oversee the stay of the new director of Homeland Security. Like many Americans
in the post-9/11 era, Lisa isn’t wild about flying, and a stressful delay at
the Dallas airport doesn’t take the edge off. But things start looking up when
she meets the ominously named Jack Rippner (Murphy), a handsome, smooth-talking
stranger. The only problem? Jack is a
hired killer, and Lisa is an unwitting pawn in his latest assignment. He
presents her with a choice -- to expose the director of Homeland Security to a
deadly terrorist threat during his hotel stay, or to risk the murder of her
father (Bryan Cox), who is being stalked by an assassin. Faced with such an
unenviable decision, Lisa does her best to sabotage Jack’s plan, and it is her
struggle that takes up much of the movie’s brief running time. Nothing
about Red Eye is extraordinary, but
it is a solid bit of
nail-biting entertainment, even if, in the end, it takes the easy way out. It
is Hitchcockian in its simplicity, and it is most effective in its quieter
moments, when Jack is calmly explaining his intentions to Lisa, who is
appropriately terrified. Murphy, who portrayed the villainous Scarecrow so
memorably in Batman Begins, is an
ideal choice for the role: He is sly, with a disarming smile and boyish looks,
but there is a deviousness in his eyes that hints at something darker, more
dangerous. Here, he is chilling, and McAdams (Wedding Crashers) matches him step for step in her understandable
desperation. It’s a compelling combination that makes this Red
Eye a flight worth catching.
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