Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a ton of RED EYE reviews for your reading pleasure. I saw this last month... my review will be coming shortly and while I didn't flip for it I was so happy that it was better than CURSED that it almost made the movie better than "alright." At least I think so. I know Harry and Fathergeek are both seeing the movie tonight, so I'm sure you'll get Big Red's opinion soon as well. In the mean time we got a few reviews. Beware of spoilers! I tend to agree with this first review, which is fairly spoiler-lite, more than the rest. Enjoy!
Hey guys,
Just caught an advance screening of "Red Eye" here in Atlanta, GA, and wanted to share my thoughts. I contributed a few reviews several years back but have been on haitus or something. Often accused of being a plant because I understand grammar... so allow the accusations to begin. I don't like spoilers, so I won't include any in this review.
This movie, just like many other thrillers of late, is a mixed bag. As for my feelings about Wes Craven, I must confess to being a huge fan of the original Scream, which in spite of its flaws was funny and had a great, surprising ending. Scream 2 was good until the ending, which rather sucked. Scream 3 was a flat-out comedy instead of a horror movie, and that was disappointing. I didn't even bother to see Cursed for obvious reasons. Any idiot can recognize a movie that bad from the trailer.
This movie wasn't intended to be horror... it's much more of a straightforward thriller. Overall, it's one of those "go see it with low expectations and you'll be entertained" type movies.
What's good about it is that the two leads handle their roles quite well. What's bad is that 90% of the other actors are quite bad, and some of them are just plain awful. And yes, Brian Cox is good as usual, and while it's nice to see him playing someone who's not purely evil for a change, he's not in the film a whole hell of a lot. What he has to do, he does well.
I must admit I am really beginnning to like Cillian Murphy. Loved him in Batman Begins... and he's equally good here, although with lesser material. He manages to pull off being likeable as well as evil and creepy, without being a stock "bad guy" character. In short, he's convincing and you actually give a damn about him. Same goes for Rachel McAdams, who I must admit that I recognize, but can't think of anything she's done without checking imdb.com, and it's past my bedtime. She does well with her role.
What was just pain bad throughout the film was the supporting roles. The "asshole" on the flight (trust me, you'll know him before he even speaks) is so obviously bad he wouldn't even have been allowed a guest appearance on "Night Court" back in the mid 80's as an idiot defendant. The family of the assassination attempt (that's not a spoiler if you've seen the trailers) isn't even "bad"... they're just boring. I felt nothing for them, and really didn't care if they lived or died. The girl who played the clueless hotel clerk was actually quite funny. She got most of the laughs in the film. Many other supporting roles (flight attendants, passengers, hotel guests, etc.) were seemingly given to family members of the producers... or to disgruntled stockholders as payback for investing in Cursed. Just bad acting, man...
There were a few good laughs and a few good surprises, though. The audience I saw it with actually clapped several times, but I didn't. Some people are easy to please, I guess. They also applauded at the credits.
I thought it was a well-done piece of fluff that could have been much worse... but could have kicked a whole bunch of ass had the supporting cast been stronger.
As for the ending, it actually devolved a bit into some cliches that have already been called out by the "Scary Movie" franchise. Honestly, how many times have we seen some crazy killer chasing a girl up a flight of stairs as she hurls chairs, lamps, bicycles, pianos, dogs, cats, geckos, ponies... at the poor guy to slow him down? You almost feel sorry for him... like some poor soldier braving his way across a battlefield.
So if you're in the mood for a thriller that looks good and has some fun moments... by all means, check it out. If you're skeptical and hard to please (like most of us who visit this site), you may find yourself bitching about it on your way to the car.
I'll give it a slight recommendation (3 of 5 stars, 6 out of 10, one thumb up, whatever) based on how much I liked Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams... and in spite of the piss-poor supporting cast.
Wes Craven irritates me because he has the potential to do so much better than he does. I guess I'm just wating for that next original work of his that scares the hell out of me like the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Damn movie gave me nightmares when I was 8 years old...
Till then, I'm-
Hitchcock's Bitch
This next one's a little more mixed/positive:
Hey, long-time reader, first-time reviewer. Since we this site doesn't yet appear to be choking from one too many Red Eye reviews, I thought I'd send in my two cents. My friend had a pass for two to a preview screening at the AMC Easton in Columbus, OH and I decided to tag along. The teaser trailer was interesting enough but the full trailer gave waaaay too much away (this whole "Once the plane lands, the ride begins!" thing kind of deflates the tension of the airborn second act). Plus, Wes Craven's last decent movie, in my opinion, was Scream, which was clever and well-made but, like a good superhero and the villains he accidentally creates, got a lot of undeserved crap for the shoddy imitators it spawned. It couldn't be all bad, however, since Rachel McAdams is cute, Cillian Murphy might still become a major star in spite of (or maybe because of) his creepiness, and Brian Cox is in it.
Anyway, the theater was packed to capacity with a very noisy, energetic, and probably well-planned out crowd of teenagers and twentysomethings. The pacing, and very short running time, do the film a service as it breezes through a cheesy conspiracy thriller-style opening sequence and the establishment of all the major players. Rachel McAdams plays Lisa, a really cute hotel manager who, in a stroke of staggering originality, has secret connections, a troubled past, and a devotion to her job that removes the possibility of any man in her life. Why hadn't anybody ever thought of a female lead like that before, hmmmm? Anyway, she needs to get back to Miami to her job at an elegant hotel (that appears to be computer-generated....seriously, every establishing shot is the same low angle of the building with a really flat sign devoid of any texture or depth). She has a cute, romantic-comedy style meeting with another single, career-driven character named Jackson, played by Cillian Murphy. This leads to some idle chit-chat, a really cheesy name revelation, and a series of coincidences that puts the two next to each other on the same flight. This first part has a lot of dialogue and little jokes that fall flat, and even the serious stuff seems just this side of parody, i.e. the overly dramatic lives of the hotel staff (I smell a TV pilot) and really topical references to terrorism, plane crashes, and Dr. Phil. At one point, a girl tells her overbearing mother, "I'm 11, not 9" or something like that.
Once we're on the plane, and it is revealed that Jackson is not kidding about all those casual references he made earlier to killing people for a living, the movie really takes off. Yes, that was an airplane joke. I'm sorry. McAdams and Murphy are really enjoyable to watch and play well off each other as the movie suddenly changes genres. The characters' lack of a complex history or any sympathy toward each other is refreshing, and it helps to make the movie feel a little more dangerous. Well, PG-13 dangerous. The scenes of Murphy quietly informing McAdams that she will play an involuntary role in the assassination of the homeland security chief or he will have her father, played by the always great Brian Cox (even though he really just sits there and talks on the phone most of the time), are very effective, as are her reactions. We can see the desperation in her eyes as she tries to formulate a plan to outsmart Jackson, and how each of these attempts ultimately does little more than buy her another two minutes and further piss him off. Craven is still a skilled manipulator of a scene, turning it from pleasant and funny to intense and messy in seconds. The audience screamed and laughed at many of these scenes, but I believe it was mostly to release some of the tension. It's not particularly scary, and it's all a little dumb, but the middle of the movie is as much unpredictable fun as the spoiler-filled trailer still allows. Plus I promise it has to be better than seeing a self-important Jodie Foster airplane thiller. I guess airplane movies make up this year's asteroid and volcano two-for-one badly timed, similar movie combo.
I don't want to give anything away once the plane lands and the movie moves toward the final showdown, but I do promise explosions, one-liners, and a classic Craven-style cat and mouse chase through a completely trashed house. This final act is entertaining and pretty satisfying, but you can tell that a lot of the originality and restraint that would have elevated it to classic status ran out of gas on the runway in Miami. The audience ate it up, cheering in all the right places, so this movie might be a sleeper hit in the next couple of weeks. Fine by me, it's harmless fun, the cast really carries it (honorable mention to a pretty funny Jayma Mays as Lisa's distraught fill-in at the hotel), and Craven could use the box office to fund something with a little more weight. I know my review is a little mixed, but I mostly enjoyed it. So, I guess I'm suggesting Red Eye as a solid date movie or rental.
If you use this, just call me ADF.
This one is spoiler-riffic, but is interesting as the reviewer fantasizes about the movie it could have been. I myself was wondering if there was going to be some twist involving Brian Cox at the end, though I'm not sure that's what I really wanted to see... Just used to there always being a twist, I guess. Anyway, here's that review!
I would tell you to beware of spoilers...but you've seen this movie already. So don't even worry about it.
Wes Craven master of the dull. King of generic film making. Why this film tickled his giggle I will never know. I can't imagine anyone reading this script and saying that it was perfect. How can Craven read this script and not want to improve upon it? The premise is a good one but the execution is just poor poor poor. This sad excuse for a lifetime channel thriller is a color by numbers thriller that does exactly what you expect at every possible turn. This script is majorly weak, so weak in fact that everything you think will happen, does and in the most basic formulaic way possible. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie.
You know I remember watching the teaser to this and going "whoa thats freaky." I was hoping that Cillian Murphy was the devil, death, or a ghost hoping to make a bargain with a young lady on her flight home from her grandmothers funeral. Ideas danced in my head of the possibilities! Than I saw the full trailer that revealed a terrorist plot and cillian Murphy was your basic gopher man set out on a job to convince her to make a phone call, to change the rooms of a senator, that would lead to his assassination. The tension on the plane was well done at times, but the tension with her fathers possible death never really resonated with me. I truly wanted Cillian Murphy to win this one but sadly as you know these films never work out that way.
So their is no other antagonist on the plane to make things interesting. Their is no supernatural sub plot to save this script from the mundane. I would rather discuss a film I made up in my head while watching this film. You see as Cillian Murphy tries to coerse Rachel McAdams into changing the hotel room of the senator he wants to assassinate another terrorist plot reveals itself on the plane. So now Murphy must deal with both her refusal to help him and a hijacking at the same time. Meanwhile on the ground her father notices the man sitting outside his house trying to kill him. We return to the plane for more wacky up-in-the-air hijinks. Murphy takes out the terrorist and forces rachel to make the call. We than see her father killing the hit man outside his house. The plan lands safely and murphy and rachel part their ways. She runs home to check on her dad, he's nowhere to be found. She runs to her hotel to try and stop the assassination. We find out that murphy and her dad were in on it together the whole time. HER DAD IS THE ASSASSIN!
HOLY CRAP! Rachel is than forced to kill her dad and MUrphy kills her. The senator is also killed. Credits role to the song "what a wonderful world."
THE END
Unfortunately none of this happens...you KNOW what happens. Yep you do.You've seen this film on many a late night while gently surfing through your one million channels. Is their anything positive to say about this film? It had a nice budget, the lighting was good. Cillian Murphy was actually really good its just too bad that character was stuck in this film. I was half expecting him to look at Rachel and say "would you like to see my mask?" Afterwards they handed out souvenir pens, replicas of the one she used to stab Cillian with. How nice...thank you hollywood for encouraging violent acts. I say skip this one and wait until you accidently come across it on a network channel at 3am after a binge of cream cheese and tartar sauce.
Manythings
And finally we have a reviewer that loved the movie... doesn't really say why except they got to meet Wes Craven, but it's a love letter nonetheless.
Hi, I just saw an advanced screening of Red Eye here in Toronto.
I must say that I really enjoyed the film. Cillian Murphy is so awesome as, the villain, Jackson Rippner (even though his name is a bit of a bad pun). I also found that the film managed to capture the claustrophobic feel of an airplane (in which the airline name was ALSO a bad pun), and that you truly had the feeling that, Rachel McAdams' character of, Lisa had nowhere to run. And even though the film switches to a generic chase scene for the finale, is a was still very suspensful.
After the screening, everyone was escorted to meet Wes Craven for autographs. Because I'm quite shy, I never got to say much, but it was definitely a memoriable experience to meet someone, who has made so many entertaining films over the years.
In closing, I should say that Red Eye is definitely worth checking out.
Sean Kelly
