Red Eye (2005): B+

An efficient thriller that alludes to both the war on terror and female abuse without allowing either issue to interfere with its consistently taut action, Wes Craven’s Red Eye takes its place alongside last year’s Cellular as that all-too-rare Hollywood creation: a tightly wound, intelligent, and gimmick-free suspense film. Upscale hotel manager Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) flirts with stranger Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy) before and during their long-delayed red eye to Miami, only to discover mid-flight that her new male acquaintance is a shadowy terrorist-for-hire threatening to kill her father (Brian Cox) unless she assists in his plot to assassinate the Director of Homeland Security (Jack Scalia) who’s staying at her hotel the following day. At a speedy 85 minutes, Craven’s brisk film has a muscular leanness that’s been sorely lacking in his recent output (Cursed, anyone? Thought not). But what makes his latest such a surprising delight is the way in which the director also cannily links Lisa’s predicament with post-9/11 security anxiety and rape. Rippner’s kidnapping of Lisa is a metaphor for both our current terrorism-sparked fears of border infiltration as well as sexual cruelty, and thus when the tough-as-nails heroine, refusing to be a victim, fights back against her would-be captor, Red Eye transforms from simply a rollicking (though somewhat slight) B-movie into a stirring portrait of personal and national retaliation against violent violation.

Comments

[Joe Grossberg]

What's up with these short movies? I mean at today's theater prices, I think a full-length feature film needs to be an hour and a half. Fifteen minutes of filler isn't so hard to spread throughout the movie. Otherwise, it's like paying $20 for a CD only to find out that it's just a six-song EP.

[Nick]

It's true that going to the movies is so expensive that one feels a bit cheated to find a film running less than an hour and a half. Still, it's better to see a short film that doesn't waste time on extraneous, runtime-padding nonsense than to sit through junk that goes on and on and on just because the filmmaker was obligated to deliver a 105-minute (or 130-minute) movie.

This weekend's two big releases are a case in point: You get much more for your money with a brisk, efficient film like Red Eye than you do with something like 40 Year-Old Virgin, which is funny and fine but should be AT LEAST fifteen minutes shorter...