Red Eye

**1/2 – This 2005 Wes Craven helmed airplane-based suspense thriller starring Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams is fairly entertaining but doesn’t distinguish itself enough from other entries in the genre to garner anything more than a fair rating. McAdams does a decent enough job at looking scared and crying and Murphy is a suitable antagonist in that he gives off equal amounts of charm and creepiness, but at the same time he is actually rather inept at his task in that he ends up getting stabbed in the throat, impaled by a high heel, beaten senseless with a field hockey stick and shot several times, all at the hands of a rather small woman and a sickly-looking Brian Cox. Seeing as his greatest adversaries in his kidnapping attempt are a pen and poor atmospheric conditions one has to wonder how he got into that line of work in the first place. Maybe he was a temp or something. Anyway, one thing working in this film’s favor is its sub-80 minute length, as anything more than that would have made this a bit of a chore watch. But with such a short run time I was hoping that this would be a non-stop action-packed thriller, but nearly 30 minutes at the beginning were devoted to uninteresting back story and silly attempts at humor. I know that this was theatrically released, but it had a distinct made-for-TV feel to it in most respects, from the crummy soundtrack to the workmanlike direction and cinematography to the drab set designs. I guess it’s worth a watch for fans of the genre, though.