Last month, Cillian Murphy won his very first Oscar for his performance as scientist/father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer in director Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. But before that happened, Murphy went on a press tour for his awards campaign (which he clearly doesn’t enjoy all that much), and while doing so, he spoke to GQ in an interview about one of his earlier films, and how he doesn’t hold it in the highest regard.
“Many of my films I haven’t seen,” he said. “Generally, the ones I haven’t seen are the ones I hear are not good.” Like the one he made with Rachel McAdams, Red Eye, of which he said, “I love Rachel McAdams, and we had fun making it, but I don’t think it’s a good movie. It’s a good B-movie.”
Murphy has every right to feel the way he does about his previous work, especially since he’s been booked and busy with very impressive projects these last few years. But I’m here to say that he is very f—king wrong about Red Eye, and here is where I use hundreds of words to explain why the film was, and is, better than Murphy says it is.
Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) is a manager at the Lux Atlantic Hotel in Miami, and she is flying back home from Dallas via a red-eye flight after attending her grandmother’s funeral in Dallas. While waiting to board her flight, she meets a man named Jackson Rippner (Murphy), and the two strike up a friendly and slightly flirtatious conversation. Lisa’s flight is ready to board, and the two of them go their separate ways. Or so Lisa thinks, as she realizes that Jackson is seated right next to her on her flight home, and he soon becomes a lot less charming and friendly towards her once the plane takes off. Jackson tells her that he’s employed by a terrorist cell that wants to assassinate Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia), the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, who is staying at her hotel, and if she doesn’t make arrangements to switch his hotel room so that he will be easier to kill, Jackson will see to it that his associates kill her father, Joe (Brian Cox). There is no one who Lisa can turn to for help, as Jackson has her cornered, and will stop at nothing to accomplish his mission. But Lisa proves to be just as resourceful and relentless and fights back against him not just for her own survival but for her father’s and that of Keefe and his family.
Let me state right off the bat that as much as I like and enjoy Red Eye, and as much as I’m about to sing this film’s praises? I also know it’s not supposed to be taken all that seriously. There is no Marvel Studios-type bathos to undermine the terror that Jackson is inflicting on Lisa, but Red Eye is also a movie where the villain’s name is Jackson Rippner. Jackson! Rippner! Even he and Lisa can’t help but joke about how ridiculous and embarrassing that name is, which is much appreciated, though it’s very likely that “Jackson Rippner” isn’t his real name. The assassination attempt against Keefe, which is comprised of the terrorists on a fishing boat firing a very large rocket launcher at Keefe’s hotel room in broad daylight while he and his family are in it? Its complete lack of finesse or subtlety brings to mind what Avon Barksdale told Stringer Bell when Stringer wanted Slim Charles to take out Clay Davis: “You need a Day of the Jackal-type muhf-cka to basically do some sh-t like that!,” and even though Jackson says that the terrorists want to make a brash statement, there is nothing about their mission that brings to mind Edward Fox or Bruce Willis.
Despite all of that, the late, great director Wes Craven is clearly having a ball with the story he’s telling, and makes sure that the battle of wills between Lisa and Jackson is a rollercoaster ride that is exciting and terrifying both on and off the plane. The only thing better than watching a thriller in which the hero has their back against the wall and fights for survival is a thriller where the hero does this while dealing with a ticking clock that creates life-and-death urgency, and keeps the audience wondering what will happen before time runs out.
However, one of the best things about Red Eye was the marketing campaign for the film and its teaser trailer, which used footage from the film to trick people into thinking that it’s a lighthearted romantic comedy, right before the revelation that it’s an edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller.
Jackson has charm, intelligence, and a beautiful pair of blue eyes…
Wait, where was I? Oh, sorry about that.
Jackson has charm, intelligence, and a beautiful pair of blue eyes. But those attributes which help him win over Lisa when they first meet are soon replaced by menace, ruthlessness, and machine-like efficiency (with a tinge of f-ckboy misogyny) when he reveals to her what he wants. Like Tom Cruise in the final act of Collateral, he goes from being a cat toying with the mouse in its grasp, to a shark that is hellbent on devouring its prey at all costs. Whatever bond Jackson thought there was between him and Lisa to ensure that she follows his orders goes right out the damn window when Lisa shows him in the worst way possible how noncompliant she is, and from that very moment, his kill switch is firmly placed in the “ON” position.
A crucial thing we learn about Lisa is that she’s a recent survivor of sexual assault at knifepoint, and she’s been rebuilding her life ever since. Lisa is patient, kindhearted, and incredibly good at her job, but she’s also fiercely determined to never let another man make her feel powerless so that he can get whatever he wants. The moment where she tells Jackson about what happened to her, followed by her plunging the pen right into his throat, will make you gasp in shock when it happens, and then give a standing ovation as Lisa runs like hell to get away from Jackson, and get to her father in time.
I’ve watched Red Eye more than once, and though it’s been a minute since I’ve last seen it, I still reacted like this when Jackson got stabbed by Lisa:
Brian Cox plays a much nicer, if slightly overbearing, father figure in Red Eye than he did on Succession (and he also gets more to do here than he does as the voice of McDonald’s), but he still gets to show Jackson (and the audience) that he is not to be f-cked with when it comes to the well-being of his family.
Cillian Murphy wasn’t wrong when he described Red Eye as a B-movie, which it is. But the fact that it’s a B-movie is nothing that anyone involved with the film, or anyone who enjoys it, should be ashamed of or apologize for. The Terminator, John Wick, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Black Christmas, Shaft, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, The Blair Witch Project, Coffy, Clerks, 28 Days Later, Attack the Block, Enter the Dragon, Halloween, and Craven’s own Scream? They’re all B-movies, and they’re also some of the best and most influential movies ever made. It’s impossible to not see or acknowledge the impact they’ve had on other movies that have followed over the years, and it’s even more difficult to ignore how much audiences enjoyed many of those films when they were originally released, and still enjoy them to this very day.
Murphy has been rewarded with some well-deserved flowers for his performance in Oppenheimer, but he also deserves a few for his role as Jackson Rippner in Red Eye. (I’m not about to wrap this up without mentioning that Rachel McAdams is also terrific in the film, because of course, she is.) Even if his response to those flowers for the latter film might be similar to Jean Tatlock getting flowers from J. Robert Oppenheimer, and he’d probably either reject them or throw them in the trash.
Red Eye is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, MGM Plus, and Paramount Plus. For those of you who hate long movies like Oppenheimer, you can rest easy with the knowledge that the runtime for Red Eye is only 85 minutes.
