Red Eye: A Tight, Absorbing Airline Drama

People are nothing if not predictable, myself included. So perhaps you won't be too surprised to find that I am once again finding myself let down by the Google audience review feature. Not that I cared about it in the first place due to the fact that the way I view movies is just so radically different from Jim the Star Wars superfan, but the film critic in me is still pained to see a movie I can immediately recognize as legitimately well-written get anything below a 4.0 out of 5 on that feature. That said, do yourself a favor and ignore the audience reviews before you watch Red Eye. I'd never heard of this movie before, but I recently deleted my watchlist to try and get out of a movie-watching system that was slowly turning into something of a thumb of oppression, and my dad suggested this one to me, so we ended up watching it together. And let me say, while it doesn't seem to be able to sustain a lot of the skill it flexes on us at the start of the movie, I found myself overall incredibly impressed and pleased by this movie, which though I'll admit can be kind of silly, is impeccably directed, incredibly acted, and mostly well-plotted. I must say, I don't think I've ever seen a Cillian Murphy performance I didn't like, and this movie is no exception. Now we know what Scarecrow does in his spare time, and I count myself blessed because of it.

That's a joke. It's just a joke, guys.

Red Eye is a 2005 psychological thriller that follows Lisa, an overworked hotel manager who suddenly finds herself in a tense hostage situation onboard an airplane with the oh-so-creatively named and ever-so-charming Jack Rippner as her captor. Jack is part of a team that wants to kill the head of Homeland Security, who is staying at Lisa's hotel, but to do so, he needs Lisa to pull some strings for him. The stakes for Lisa are that if she doesn't comply, Jack's team is going to kill her father. It's a real pickle, indeed, and it triggers a battle of wits between captor and captive with mortal consequences.

One thing that stood out to me relatively immediately about Red Eye is that it very effectively creates such an incredible sense of stress. The editing of the movie is so incredibly frenetic, perfectly capturing the weight of Lisa's situation and, arguably more impressively, the stress of her ordinary work life as well. Adding a sense of cohesion to this chaos are two incredible performances from Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, the latter of whom could very possibly be the most talented actor alive right now. It shows even in 2005, as he's able to pivot from suave charm to terrifying psychoticness on a dime.

As for the plot, the opening act of this movie is definitely one of the stronger opening acts I've seen in a movie this year and sets an excellent tone for the rest of Red Eye. Not only is it narratively efficient, but it also places a lot of emphasis on small-scale scenes and details that give this movie a sense of realism via thoroughness. In short, the little things matter to Red Eye. This movie is really contained, and it's never trying to spread itself out in any way. This lends it a practical groundedness and sense of importance that kept me intrigued and wondering how Lisa was going to solve the problem she's found herself in.

As for the weaknesses of the movie, I don't love the more expositional nature of some of the big reveals. This tactic was just too easy and was less streamlined than everything that had come before. Now, the airplane is not the setting of the entire movie, and it seemed to me that Red Eye started to run out of ideas when it transitioned away from its airplane setting and began to opt for the tone of a more conventional chase thriller than anything else, though its structure and pacing did remain strong throughout.

Also, the movie does eventually write itself into a small corner when it's trying to create a third-act showdown, though the actual showdown itself was superbly directed and tense. So, not everything about the movie sticks, but rest assured that most of it does. I was especially surprised at the efficiency and restraint exercised by Red Eye. The movie clocks in at a shockingly succinct one hour and twenty-six minutes, and I wouldn't have stretched it out a minute longer. There's absolutely no self-indulgence to be found in Red Eye, and I would go so far as to call it refreshingly humble.

This movie was a pleasant surprise. For as much as I hate airports, between Carry-On and now Red Eye, the setting doesn't have a half-bad record when it comes to movies I've seen in the last month or so. Red Eye is an intelligent and efficient movie that is at its absolute best when it's utilizing its airplane-based hostage situation to the fullest and pushing its premise as far as its ideas will allow it to. It features some incredible performances from both Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, and for the cherry on top, the runtime never overstays its welcome in any way. Once again, I find myself at odds with an audience that seems to be split over a movie, so forgive me if this sounds pretentious, but I feel like a lot of these people casually and I would argue ignorantly dropping 1-star reviews online would be happier watching two chatbots argue with each other if they're looking for characters who possess a flawless sense of logic. The varying effectivity of the mental chess moves Lisa and Jackson make with each other keeps this movie interesting and makes Red Eye an intelligent, gripping, and minimalistic movie that perfectly understands that "more movie" does not necessarily equal "better movie."

Red Eye makes the absolute most out of an incredibly and even hopelessly claustrophobic ordeal and does so much more with so much less.

Red Eye - 8/10

Psalm 144:7-8