The Beast Review: Red Eye

Somehow I had missed that Wes Craven had directed another film that was in the theatres. As soon as I heard one of his movies was showing, Andi and I headed over to the theatre to catch the matinee. I love matinee movies.

There were several aspects of the film I was pleased with. First of all, it is not a hijacking film, which is good news. I hate hijacking films. The plot revolves around a hotel manager who is on a flight and gets summoned by a terrorist to make a call to the hotel and change rooms for the homeland security director who will be staying at the hotel. In other words, the assassin's need him to be in this other room in order to successfully make the hit. The catch is that if she doesn't make the call, her unexpecting father gets killed himself. The last 10 minutes of the picture are classic Craven, with sudden scares and tense, edge of your seat moments. A few times as Cillian Murphy would make his move through a door or jump out, you would swear that you were looking at Freddie Krueger.

On the negative side, the film seemed slow at the beginning, and I had a real problem with the efforts Rachel McAdams made to avoid making the call. With her father's life on the line, it seems a simple phone call would have been made in order to save her fathers life. However, once she learned that the entire family was going to be hit, even the children, then her resistance makes more sense. Also, these professional hit men used a freakin' missile launcher to take out basically an entire floor of the motel. Are you kidding me? That seemed a little stupid to me. Why waste time getting him into another room if you going to blast him with a missile. Just fire that baby up when his car pulls up in front the hotel, taking out a city block along with him. A lot easier.

Overall, I was pleased with the film, just some points of silliness here and there. But, what else is Hollywood for?

The Beast Grade: B