Movie Review: Red Eye (2005)

Synopsis: After attending her grandmother's funeral in Dallas, hotel manager Lisa Reisert takes a red-eye flight back to her home in Miami. While standing in line to check in, she meets Jackson Rippner, who charms her into having a drink while waiting for their weather-delayed flight. She is then later pleasantly surprised to find he is seated next to her on the plane. However, not long after the plane is in the air, Lisa learns Jackson isn't the nice guy he seems to be. Instead, he's part of a domestic terrorist group plotting to assassinate the director of Homeland Security in her hotel and, if she doesn't help them, her father will die.

Who's in it? The movie stars Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jayma Mays and Jack Scalia.

Review: After scrolling through movies for more than thirty minutes yesterday evening and finding myself unsure if any of the newer ones were worth watching, I decided to instead go with a film I remember being good but hadn't seen in a long while, Red Eye. I had no regrets re-watching it.

As I discovered during my earlier search, there are a lot of movies out there with a similar plot. Not all of them can pull it off. This one does a great job.

The thing that makes this movie work, in my opinion, is the back-and-forth between Lisa (McAdams) and Jackson (Murphy). Lisa is a strong, independent and confident woman who isn't quick to submit to Jackson's will while Jackson is both sadistic and calculating enough to know when Lisa is trying to step out of line. The way he puts her back under his control, including the use of physical violence, give him just enough of a cringe factor to make it easy to fear for her life.

The fact the movie is taking place on a plane that is constantly facing turbulence from storms adds something as well. As someone who personally doesn't like to fly, I could feel every bump that plane hit, adding to the overall anxiety. At the same time, there was a lot of added frustration because it was a full plane with help seemingly within easy reach, but Jackson made sure Lisa couldn't get it.

There were also some interesting twists, like the phones going dead, that added to the suspense because it forced Jackson to go off script as far as the plan was concerned. This, in turn, made him seem even more dangerous because he clearly wasn't a guy who liked to improvise.

The movie's climax was admittedly a bit farfetched but still fun to watch. It was great seeing Lisa get back some of her control while, at the same time, still fearing for her life, her father (Cox) and Jackson's target (Scalia). It was unclear if or how she would manage to save everyone, especially since she was being hunted down by airport security too. I mean, I could probably spend time analyzing it and find plenty of ways she could have stopped Jackson sooner and with less work but why ruin it?

Final Opinion: As I mentioned before, there are plenty of movies out there with a similar plot, but this one is easily one of the better ones. It's worth taking the time to watch or re-watch if you get a chance.

My Grade: A

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