Is it a good idea to watch Red Eye (2005) a few days before you are supposed to fly?  Maybe not, but I did anyway.  What I expected was a thriller, the events of which take place during a commercial airlines flight between Dallas, Texas, and Miami, Florida.  I vaguely recall when it came out in the theater and it not sparking my interest despite being fans of its two lead performers, Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy.  I was a much more sporadic theater goer back then, but would attend whenever something struck my fancy.  I say all this in order to contextualize my surprise during the opening credits to see that it was directed by Wes Craven.  Many will recognize that name as being associated with horror films, which are not my favorite.  I am only vaguely familiar with his work, but even I could recognize elements of the slasher flicks for which he is better known.  Nonetheless, he is a guy with a camera, and he is thus theoretically capable of making any kind of movie.  I often questioned the decisions made by characters in the story, but that is common for this genre.

For Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams), manager of the Lux Hotel in Miami, the main question on her mind is whether she will make the Red Eye flight home.  She is running late to the airport as she is returning home after the funeral of her grandmother.  On top of the stress of only having minutes to spare, she is dealing with Cynthia (Jayma Mays), one of her staff who calls her with a demanding set of customers.  Between catering to that craziness and her overly caring, but lovable, father, Joe Reisert (Brian Cox), she is actually thankful that there is a delay to her scheduled departure.  While waiting in line to get the matter sorted, as is so often the case with such situations, she meets Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy).  He is in the same situation as Lisa, and he offers to have a drink with her as they await their boarding.  Initially, she politely declines, claiming a plethora of needed phone calls.  Her mind is changed when she bumps into another hurried traveler and is doused with iced coffee.  Hence, an adult beverage is needed.  As she joins him, he is a bit more charming, doing the chivalrous thing and paying her tab.  Once more they say they farewells, only to find they have been seated next to each other on the plane.  She is nervous during the take off and he talks her through it, but his attitude is becoming more cavalier.  Since he has disarmed her, she does not take seriously his matter-of-fact statement that he works for a domestic terrorism organization.  It is not until he says that he will kill her father, producing Joe’s wallet as proof of his threat, that she realizes the danger.  Some of you may not remember this, but there was a day when airplanes had telephones embedded into the seatbacks that you could dial out by paying with your credit card.  With this technology, Jackson orders Lisa to call the hotel that she works for and have a certain regular guest, the Keefe family, be moved to a specific room.  Jackson’s plan is to kill them, but if Lisa does not comply, it will be Joe who is murdered.  Obviously, this is quite the predicament for Lisa, and she tries to do whatever she can to prevent having to submit to Jackson’s will.  Her first ploy is to get him to ensure that her father will remain unharmed, but all Jackson offers is the reassurance that his partner will not move without his consent.  Next, while Jackson is helping another passenger, a woman (Angela Paton) to whom Lisa had given a book comes over to discuss it.  The distraction gives Lisa the opportunity to write a plea for help in the pages, but Jackson returns before anything can happen.  He then renders Lisa unconscious, and when she stirs, she finds him gloating with the book in his hand.  Once more, there is the demand that she relay the instructions to Cynthia, but the connection drops in the middle of the conversation.  Despite this, Lisa continues talking as if the line was still good until Jackson realizes the charade.  Her last attempt is to scrawl her urgent need for assistance on the bathroom mirror, but this, too, is found out.  Now seemingly out of options, and with phone service restored, she is forced to make the call.  With the plane landing and taxying to the gate, she begins talking about how she got a scar on her chest.  The story lulls him into a false sense of security, which she uses to stab a pen into his larynx and make a mad dash off the plane.  There is a brief chase through the airport but she makes it onto the tram to the main part of the terminal without him, then steals a car.  The reason for the theft is to drive to Joe’s house to make sure her father is okay.  I guess there is no time to alert the police at this moment?  While speeding through traffic, she frantically calls Cynthia on the cell phone she took from Jackson, getting her co-worker to move the Keefe’s before a missile fired from a nearby boat slams into the room they had been occupying.  Lisa then makes it to dad’s place in time to prevent the killer from carrying out his awful deed, doing so by running the assassin over with the car.  Joe turns out to be okay until Lisa takes a break from the excitement to check in on Cynthia.  Upon hearing that the Keefe’s are okay, she emerges to discover Jackson has found them.  This is when it becomes a slasher film, with Jackson stalking her through the house.  A revived father and his daughter end up subduing Jackson just as the police arrive.  We end with Lisa returning to her hotel and praising Cynthia in front of those same irate customers.

If anyone should be irate, it is Lisa for having a nightmare of a Red Eye flight.  I have to credit her poise, however.  Granted, she gets frantic in dealing with Jackson, which is understandable.  I also do not love when she tells off the insufferable couple at the end.  Otherwise, that is a remarkable record for somebody who stays clearheaded throughout much of the crazy proceedings.  The film seems to suggest that it is part of her training as a manager in dealing with difficult customers and situations.  Having not received such instruction myself, I can only speculate as to the accuracy of the portrayal.  What I can say is that her behavior is Christian, to a certain degree.  Not the part where she stabs Jackson in the throat or steals a car, but in trying to find a solution to her predicament while preserving life.  In case you are wondering what is so important about the Keefes, the patriarch, Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia), is the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security.  I guess he is as good a target as any for a domestic terrorist, but they are portrayed as a loving family who treat Lisa well.  Thus, it is not an easy choice between her father and the Keefes.  There is a real-life ethical theory involved here called the “Trolley Problem.”  You have a runaway car and the ability to pull one lever to divert it.  If it goes one way, it kills multiple people; the other and only one perishes.  Catholicism states that all life is precious, and so you might be tempted to think that the theologically sound answer is to only let one die.  The issue is that God asks us to see such a scenario differently.  All those lives are precious in His eyes, and none of them should suffer.  Without specifically saying so, this is the position that Lisa takes.  Of course she wants her father to live, but she is not about to let an entire family die because of the dilemma in which she finds herself.  Even if she had failed to save any of them, God sees the intent of her heart, and that is meaningful.

What is less meaningful is Red Eye as a whole.  As hinted at in the introduction, as is usual for these kinds of film, I kept thinking of ways of getting Lisa out of this predicament.  I would think shouting at the top of her lungs about what Jackson is trying to do, and then having the pilot alert the authorities upon landing would have been the move, but then again, I was not the person dealing with the scenario.  What I will also not be doing is watching this movie again.