Lisa Reisert hates to fly, but the terror that awaits her on the night flight to Miami has nothing to do with a fear of flying. Moments after takeoff, Lisa's seatmate, Jackson menacingly reveals the real reason he's on board: He is an operative in a plot to kill a rich and powerful businessman, and Lisa is the key to its success. If she refuses to cooperate, an assassin awaiting a call from Jackson will kill her father. Trapped within the confines of a jet at 30,000 feet, Lisa has nowhere to run and no way to summon help without endangering her father, her fellow passengers and her own life. As the miles tick by, Lisa knows she is running out of time. She desperately looks for a way to thwart her ruthless captor and stop a terrible murder.

I think they should invent a new category for movies called the Murphy's Law movies. Murphy's Law states “If anything can go wrong it will” and some movies follow this law to a fault, to the point where you want to scream at the screen ‘c’mon’ and it hurts the movie in the long run. If you need to make a phone call and you have a cell phone one of two things will happen you will get no signal or the battery will die. If you run you will eventually just run into the bad guy and etc etc etc. Red Eye is a decent movie, it can be tense and it can be thrilling but it ultimately just falls prey to Murphy’s Law, which is a shame. Wes Craven should know better but sometimes when I watch movies like this I begin to think that Craven may be just a tad overrated. The movie fell into all the traps I could see a Jerry Bruckheimer movie being riddled with and all the clichés take away from the drama that is truly there at times. The movie is worth a matinee but not much else, its just to formulaic to be anything but cookie cutter at times.

I was impressed with Rachel McAdams who really hasn’t been in much up until now but seems to be having a sleuth of movies recently. Rachel can act and she makes you feel the drama but she too fell prey to some of the clichés the movie was ripe with. Cillian Murphy is another actor with not much on his resume but with a promising start to his career as well. The chemistry between Murphy and McAdams was very real at times as they fed off each other good and bad. In the beginning it was the sexual tension but as the movie progressed and Cillian became the bad guy it became a much more serious and emotion tension. I liked the two together and they are what makes the movie watch able. With a story riddled with clichés and Murphy’s Law it was there performances that kept you glued to the screen even though it was obvious to guess the ending if not how it would get to that ending. The movie is a good Saturday afternoon matinee to pass the time away but not much more.

The movie strikes on some serious political issues as the main character who is being attempted be assassinated is the head of homeland security. It isn’t hard to believe that there is many disenchanted groups in our country and abroad that do not agree with homeland security and the patriot acts and who would not mind seeing the head of these efforts eliminated. The movie does a good job kind of bypassing all these serious political agendas and with good reason. Movies should not be propaganda for one side or the other. Assassination is a serious topic and regardless of who is the target there is probably a better way to deal with them whether they be friend or foe and some of our political left should keep that in mind.
3 stars out of 5