Whats the mile-high club?

RE: Cillian Murphy movie marathon-Day three

RED EYE


This movie was better for me the second time around. I think I liked the beginning of the movie, before it gets into the actual plot,even better than I liked the rest of the plot-driven movie. The natural,casual dialog between Jackson Rippner and Lisa was very good and if you didn't already know what the movie was about, you wouldn't even see it coming that he was an evil manager that threatens to kill her dad.

Even later in the film, where he reveals his evil plan and turns scary, he didn't really come off as your typical evil villian. It was more like he was a likable person but he just had a job to do and he took his job seriously. Probably because he's a good project manager and they pay him well. Much like Number Two in the Austin Powers movies. Cillian Murphy of course fits this role perfectly. You needed someone who you would want to order you a Seabreeze at an airport bar and distract you during scary plane turbulence. The chemistry was great. I also loved how Rachel McAdams's character, Lisa, didn't have your usual unbelievable glamorous job, she was very believable in her job as a hotel manager. She was also very natural in her role in a way where you weren't like "Oh, this is the new Rachel McAdams movie." You believe her and enjoy watching what she is going to do about this sticky evil-manager situation.

If it was my situation, it would have been a much shorter movie. If my dad's life was being held hostage by some dreamy, evil project manager I would feel really bad and really confused and scared as hell but I would make the call and cooperate. He explained the situation calmly and politely enough with those soulful irish eyes. That would be enough for me. I'm not a super hero. I'm not going to kid myself and think I can foil the big elaborate evil plan by stabbing him in the neck. I'd spare my poor dad and make the call and move on. Maybe even see if Mr. Bad guy wanted to go grab a drink or something after. He's been following me for 8 weeks so I could totally trust him to order for me. There was some great chemistry there in the beginning.

The beginning could have been the beginning of a whole different movie. Two beautiful strangers meet at the airport and discover they share the same flight. They have the whole red eye flight to fall in love. JP's Before Sunrise analogy was a pretty winning idea. Where does all that chemistry go? What? Just because he's got a questionable, dangerous job that threatens your dad to get you to help him out with his evil plan, he's suddenly undesirable? He promised to not kill the dad. I believed him. And what a bitch stabbing him in the neck, I mean, what was that?

Ok. Maybe things wouldn't work out in the long run but she had an opportunity in that airplane bathroom to have some pretty exciting sex and she blew it. Instead of trying some desperate attempt of whatever that soap call-for-help thing was, I would have been waiting to pounce him when he comes crashing in to check on me. That would have been hot.

Anyway, overall it was a pretty entertaining movie, Wes Craven did a good job and even though I've seen it once before, I still felt that edge-of-seat sensation. Everybody was great and Cillian Murphy has become one of my favorite actors. He added a lot of flavor to this movie and if he wasn't in it, it wouldn't have been the same.