director
Wes Craven
screenwriter
Carl Ellsworth
story by
Dan Foos
Carl Ellsworth
producers
Chris Bender
Marianne Maddalena
cinematographer
Robert D. Yeoman
music
Marco Beltrami
editors
Stuart Levy
Patrick Lussier
cast
Rachel McAdams (Lisa Reisert)
Cillian Murphy (Jackson Rippner)
Brian Cox (Joe Reisert)
Jack Scalia (Keefe)
Jayma Mays (Cynthia)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 85m
u.s.
release: 8/19/05
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
site
other wes
craven films
reviewed on this website:
- cursed
- the hills have eyes
- last
house on the left
- scream
- scream
2
- scream
3
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It isn't enough to enjoy playing
a psychopath; you must also convey some wit, or some pathos,
or at least some shading. In Wes Craven's hollowly efficient
Red Eye, Cillian Murphy, who seems to be grooming
himself as the movies' next Creepy Man after Batman
Begins, plays a sort of assassination go-between.
This sociopath, who goes by the name Jackson Rippner (oh, please
-- I guess we should be thankful his middle initial isn't D),
isn't really a hands-on hit man; he facilitates murders, gets
everything neatly set up for the real assassins. A movie about
such a character might be intriguing -- haven't you ever wondered
who does all the research for hired killers? Do they have staff
reference librarians?
Murphy, however, plays Rippner
mostly as a stone-cold desperate psycho (which is also mostly
how he's written). Even in his early scenes, when he insinuates
himself into the trust of hotel employee Lisa Reisert (Rachel
McAdams), he betrays nothing human, nothing that would suggest
an actual person doing this disagreeable job. And in a thriller
in which we spend most of our time with these two people, that
hurts. After Rippner and Lisa are seated together on a late flight
according to his plan, he drops his amiable act fast and lays
down the rules: Lisa must move the head of Homeland Security
from one hotel room to another, or else Rippner will make a call
to a hit man loitering outside the house of Lisa's dad (Brian
Cox).
It's an extremely movie-ish
premise -- we have to believe that only Lisa has the clout to
get that room re-assigned, and that the head of Homeland Security
would even remember her (part of the plan is contingent
on Lisa's people skills). Hitchcock, of course, got lots of mileage
out of just such absurd plots. But Wes Craven, whatever other
strengths he has, isn't Hitchcock. His talent lies in inspired
nastiness and ruthlessness, but there's only so far he can push
the envelope in a PG-13 thriller, and Jackson Rippner is not,
to put it kindly, one of the more memorable icons of fear from
the man who gave us Freddy Krueger, Ghostface, and the anarchic
brutes of Last
House on the Left and The
Hills Have Eyes.
Red Eye gets in and out fast -- it's only
85 minutes long -- but at times it seems not even movie-ish,
but TV-movie-ish. (Craven has done his share of work for the
tube, as has his screenwriter here, Carl Ellsworth, who penned,
among other things, the first Halloween episode of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer -- not one of the show's highlights, as I
recall.) The film becomes a routine cat-and-mouse game, with
the ice-blooded Rippner putting increasing pressure on the flawless
Lisa. To up the ante -- so that the audience won't shrug and
say "Who cares all that much if the Homeland Security
guy dies?" -- the politician's family is also put in jeopardy,
and Rachel McAdams does make us believe that Lisa wouldn't be
able to live with herself if she colluded, however unwillingly
and under duress, in multiple murder. Of course, Craven also
keeps cutting back to Lisa's dad at home, mostly dozing in front
of the TV. The movie is generally too humorless to find any wit
in the contrast between Lisa's plight and her dad's heavy-lidded
obliviousness to it. Poor Brian Cox, left with little to do except
snore.
One actor comes through: Jayma
Mays gives an amusingly insecure performance as a rookie at Lisa's
hotel, who in Lisa's absence finds herself dealing with rude
customers, visiting politicians, and a wayward missile. Ah, yes.
The climax involves both a rocket launcher and a vengeful
Rippner, sucking in gurgly air from a wound in his throat (Craven,
amazingly, fails to make this detail creepy) and wielding a big
knife. It's the kind of climax in which we realize, with something
of a contemptuous chuckle, why we were earlier shown a photo
of Lisa on her school curling team -- so that she could find
the curling stick in her old bedroom and whack Rippner with it.
Obviously unintentionally, Red Eye has been fortuitously
cast: The Scarecrow from Batman Begins versus the ingenue
from last month's surprise hit Wedding Crashers. I wondered
how much more fun the film might've been if it had been Brian
Cox in Murphy's role and Jayma Mays in McAdams' role. Or, hell,
McAdams as the cold-blooded killer and Murphy as the white-knuckled
hotel clerk. At least McAdams would've looked more fetching in
the throat-wound-concealing purple scarf than Murphy does.
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