Red Eye

CinemaSerf 9/5/2022 6:19:52 PM 8.4

"Lisa" (Rachel McAdams) is chatting away to her fellow passenger on an aircraft when suddenly things all start to take a bit of a menacing turn. It turns out that "Rippner" (Cillian Murphy) needs her to contact the hotel in which she works and get them to move a visiting - and important - family to a new suite. Should she not acquiesce to this perfectly reasonable request, then he has a pal on the ground who is all set to bump off her father "Joe" (Brian Cox). For the first half an hour, this is quite an effective thriller - the dynamic between the two, with her hemmed into her increasingly claustrophobic airline seat, helps build quite a decent sense of peril. Sadly, though, as she begins to fight back the scenario begins to lose it's potency. His complete control of the situation begins to become more and more compromised as serendipity takes just bit too much of an interest in the story for my liking. That's not to say that "Lisa" need be a shrinking violet in the face of her psychological oppressor, it's just that the fightback is all just a bit far-fetched, before a rather messy and unsatisfying ending that you just know is going to happen. Murphy can be quite an edgy character actor - he is an attractive man with a hint of something underhand (I think he'd make a good "Bond" villain) and McAdams is confident and competent - it's just the originality of the story that peters out and becomes predictably mediocre.