Red Eye

Wes Craven's latest turns out to be perhaps the tightest pure thriller of the year. It starts out one way, then takes a turn to become a mid-air mind game between Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams, and then becomes something of a larger scale story of espionage and political terror. Craft wise, the middle section is the most suspenseful and compelling, but its the ending segment that almost makes this a potentially great film, especially when seen in light of Craven's other work. The auteur theorist in me may be willing to elevate this to a higher level than it deserves because, in some ways, it is a consummation of Craven's career. So many of his best films deal with the dehumanizing effects of violence -- even when it is warrarted (ie. The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and Scream). Here, however, thanks to Murphy's charmingly sinister, antagonistic performance, and thanks to the nature of the genre, Craven builds up a blood lust in the audience that demands McAdam's kill her attacker. But he wisely deprives the audience of that satisfaction, instead allowing Murphy to be shot not by McAdams, but by Brian Cox who plays her father, and even then he only incapacitates the villain rather than resorting to a justified slaying. Craven finally allows his protagonists to retain their humanity and actually prove themselves morally superior to the villain.