Red Eye

I watched this film on a whim last night, having never watched it before, and I have some thoughts.

A brief synopsis, before we get into it… and since I’ll be talking about what happened in the film, you shouldn’t read this if you haven’t already seen the film.

So, a woman, Lisa, played by Rachel McAdams, is on her way back to Miami from her grandmother’s funeral. She meets this charming and handsome man, Jackson, played by Cillian Murphy, before boarding. They have a drink and end up being seated next to each other. There’s some flirting going on… and then it takes a turn.

See, Lisa works for this hotel, and this important politician is going to be staying there. Jackson and his team (I guess?) were hired to kill said politician, and they need Lisa, as a manager, to get the politician’s room moved so they can carry out their plan. If she doesn’t obey, her father will be killed.

For me, I would have made the call. Cillian staring at me with those blue eyes… I’d do anything. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea or concept, I just didn’t understand why she didn’t just make the call to save her father… but maybe I’m just assuming most people would easily pick to save the life of someone they love at the expense of someone they barely know… but that could be a moral flaw within myself…

When she learns that the politician’s wife and two kids will also be killed, I see her hesitation more… but at first, I was just like, girl, just make the call and save your dad.

I was very curious how the tension would continue to build when a majority of the film (I assumed) would take place on the plane, but I thought the tension building was great. There’s a moment when she finally agrees to make the call, but the plane is going through turbulence, and the airplane phone loses connection. There are times when she tries to ask for help, and there’s a bit of a change of scenery when they end up in the bathroom. There’s also a moment where out of nowhere, he headbutts the shit out of her, and even I gasped. (There’s a great callback towards the end of the film where she headbutts him, and I loved that.)

For me, I really got invested when the plane lands and Lisa stabs Jackson in the neck and dashes off the plane. Sidenote, and this is something I’m guilty of in my younger days of writing, Lisa telling Jackson her assault (what I assume to be sexual assault) story felt icky. We’re in a different time now, but I hope we’ve moved away from giving women power in stories via sexual assault trauma (again, something I had to learn too).

The chase through the airport was exciting to me. I know Wes Craven directed the film and it was written by someone else, but Lisa reminded me so much of Sidney from Scream. She is resourceful, brave, intelligent, I could go on and on.

So, she does finally make the call, before they get off the plane because there really isn’t anything else she can do. She tried everything… and once she is off the plane and on her way to her dad’s, she calls the hotel back and saves the political family. She then gets to her dad’s and that’s where Lisa and Jackson have their final showdown.

It was so tense, and there were moments where I thought he would appear in one place, then another… then another, only for him to finally appear somewhere else. Also, as they go through the house, she beats the shit out of him, which makes it more believable that this hotel manager can take on this trained killer… because he’s wounded before he even gets to the house.

I also say something when I went to IMBD, (I always go to IMBD when watching something new to see if I recognize anymore, or to see what someone has been in), there was something I didn’t think of. Someone alluded to the fact that Jackson is upset because he’ll never have a woman like Lisa, and it made me think back to a moment in the final showdown where Lisa calls him pathetic, and there’s a reaction there. He had all of the control… up until the point that she stabbed him and escaped the plane. And it seems that the flirting he was doing at the beginning, may not have been just an act. Maybe he really wanted her to like him, even if he couldn’t “have” her.

There were some plot things that got me, but what can you do? For instance, I immediately thought, why don’t they just hijack the politician’s plane or do something to it to make it fall out of the sky… It didn’t help that the assassins end up using a fucking ROCKET LAUNCHER to shoot at the hotel room… Why didn’t you just shoot it at his plane and leave Lisa and her dad out of this… but, things gotta happen to move the story forward.

All and all, it was a great movie. I think people thought because it was a Wes Craven film, there would be more blood/horror, myself included, but this was more of a thriller, and it was great.