Film Review - Red Eye dir. Wes Craven

Being a fan of Wes Craven's Nonsense Horror as I like to rename the sub genre, and also a fan of Cillian Murphy's face, I thought a film which could combine the two would be a great evenings entertainment. I saw it LA, where radio DJs are apparently more candid than they are in Blighty. As we were driving back from the cinema, a local radio presenter remarked that Red Eye 'sucked turtle butt' and that director Wes Craven was 'King of the 'Tards'. I was inclined to agree. Red Eye seems to be Craven's attempt at a suspenseful thriller, maybe he'd seen Collateral and thought he'd chance his arm. What you get is barely more suspenseful than your regular wait at the concessions counter to see if any hot dogs are ready.

Cillian Murphy plays Jackson Rippner (yes, an attempt on Jack The Ripper, and it only gets worse) alongside Rachel McAdams as Veronica Victim (just kidding, it's Lisa Reisert). The two meet at an airport and after some bedroom eyes and barely disguised foreplay they part onto their respective flights. But wait! They end up on the same flight! And sat next to each other! Which is great because I was worried that the first twenty minutes of the film would actually come to nothing, and that Cillian Murphy wasn't the star at all, merely a bit part, 'stranger at airport'.

So on the plane they get, and Jackson starts to go a bit mental. He admits that he's an international assassin, and that his hitman buddy has Lisa's father firmly within his gun sight. If Lisa (who works at some hotel or such) doesn't move the deputy secretary of homeland security into a room where another assassin can get a clear shot on him, her father will die. The next five hours are a battle of wills between Lisa and Jackson, until, in the daftest moment of the entire film, she stabs him in the thorax with a pen. Poor Cillian then has to spend the rest of the movie talking like...well, like he's got a pen in his thorax. Throw in a crazy chase across an airport, some useless bit characters who give nothing to the plot whatsoever, a fragment of back story about Lisa being raped, a ditsy hotel receptionist and a frantic battle in Lisa's bedroom, which still, luckily, holds an arsenal of sports related weaponry.

And in the end, who do you think emerges the victor? Do you think that the murderous assasin manages to have the politician killed? Do you think that Jack the Ripper kills Lisa and her Dad and walks off into the sunset to write novels with his own throat? No. There is barely any suspense once they're off the plane, and even whilst on it the action resembles more of a comedy of errors than a masterpiece in terror. Cillian Murphy really deserves more than this, and just ends up looking and sounding ridiculous by the end. Avoid this nonsense, and pay homage to the LA DJ who summed it up better. Red Eye sucks turtle butt and Wes Craven is King of the 'Tards.