nan | 楠木

Red Eye stars Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, and is a short (85 minutes running length) but to-the-point thriller, directed by established horror director Wes Craven. It’s not award winning stuff, but it will certainly entertain.

The plot has many implausibilities, but don’t all thrillers. The sweet Ms. McAdams is Lisa, a lobby receptionist at a posh Miami hotel. She’s catching a red eye back to Miami from Texas, and at the airport she meets Cillian Murphy, who plays Jackson Rippner, a smooth talking yuppie type who seems to immediately warm up to her (while making fun of his own name, in relation to Jack the Ripper).

Alas, all is not what it seems, as the coincidences build up (they are on the same flight, and they sit next to each other), something’s got to be going on. And indeed something is. Rippner is as creepy as his name suggests, and the curtain is drawn as soon as the plane takes off. The gist of it all? He’s a professional hitman, and he is threatening Lisa to do as she is told, or her father (Brian Cox) will be killed by his accomplice. But it’s really simple, really – all he needs is for Lisa to pull some strings at the hotel, so that an important VIP is moved to another room, setting up the chance for a hit.

The bulk of the film is spent at the airport, building up the structure, and on the plane, where it’s a closed environment and the two persons play a dangerous mind game. The last 20 minutes or so is on the ground, and it all gets very physical, turning into a Scream type of slasher film. Personally, although most of the real thrills is in the last 20 minutes, I found the plane part to be more original (and hence interesting). It’s a confined space with limited options (you can’t really go about killing people, or even make a small scene), so it makes an engrossing scenario. But it’s also a hard sell, so it’s especially challenging to the plot and the direction. For this film, although the implausibilities are apparent, and the events depicted on the plane could have been better chosen, I found the end result to be acceptable, and that makes this film work.

7/10