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Printer-Friendly ModeShuteye preferable to Red Eye
August 25, 2005 —
What a waste of time this movie is. Interrupting my extended viewing of X-Men the animated series, Red Eye failed to compare on any level to the cartoon. Plot and character development, cohesiveness and sensibleness were all superior in the children's show. Most of all, the cartoon caused me to care in some degree about its characters and what happened to them. Red Eye did not.
Rachel McAdams plays Lisa, a management-level employee at a swanky hotel. Her grandmother has just passed away, and she is forced to catch a last-minute flight. The flight is delayed, and amidst the dissatisfaction of its passengers, Jackson Ripner enters the picture. Played by Cillian Murphy, viewers may recognize him from a far better movie from the summer, Batman Begins.
Jackson and Lisa hit it off in the airport. Here, mere minutes into the movie, is where it already begins to fall apart. Jackson is made out to be charming and intriguing. Unfortunately, he comes across as strange and a bit scary. Scary is all well and good, but one wonders why Lisa seems so taken with him. This is most likely because that is what the movie needs of her in order to set the audience up for a shock when he is revealed to be dangerous, which really isn't shocking at all in a movie like this.
Once on the plane, the meaningless relationship set up between the two comes to a screeching halt as Jackson reveals himself to be an operative involved in a plot to assassinate a high ranking Homeland Security official. He tells her that he has a hit man outside of her fathers' house. What he needs from her is her authority at the hotel. The targeted government official will be arriving at the hotel early that morning, and all she needs to do is have his room changed. If she doesn't, her father is dead.
For most people this wouldn't be too tough a choice. They would save their father. Perhaps if it was the President, or someone who was about to do something extremely important or world altering, it would be a difficult decision. Generally, this is the point at which a movie will show the audience something to make us understand why we want this man to be saved.
Instead, we are treated to this line from Lisa: "I know him. He's a decent man." Then we wait for her to elaborate. She does not do so. Twenty minutes later, we are treated to a horrendous scene showing the government official with his family, which lasts for about thirty seconds. Apparently, this was the film's last desperate attempt to try to make us care.
Highlights of this movie include a vicious head-butt delivered by Jackson to Lisa that is so sudden and unnecessary that it's hilarious, and a scene showing him leering towards her from the darkness across the plane as she walks to the bathroom. The rest of the passengers do not react to these odd happenings, and remain almost completely silent throughout.
The movie's closing scenes include a few outrageous acts of violence, a nigh-impossible assassination attempt, and a gun that changes locations of its own volition three different times in order to cater to the scene.
This is a movie that feels like it is supposed to be so bad that it's funny. It fails to entertain in any real fashion, but is thankfully less than 90 minutes long. It's just too bad that those were 90 minutes that could have been spent watching taped Saturday morning cartoons.