red eye movie – A 2005 thriller film directed by Wes Craven and starring Rachel McAdams as a hotel manager ensnared in an assassination plot by a terrorist Cillian Murphy while aboard a red eye flight to Miami.
Lisa Reisert (played by Rachel McAdams) has a fear of flying, and after attending her grandmother’s funeral in Dallas, Texas, she has to take a night flight (called a red-eye flight; hence the title) to Miami, Florida. While in the check-in line she meets a nice old lady (played by Angela Paton) who is interested in Lisa’s Dr. Phil book. She tells her she’s a fan, Lisa gives the old lady her book saying she has already read it. She then meets the handsome, charming Jackson Rippner (played by Cillian Murphy) — and ends up having a drink with him at a terminal bar, where Jackson tries to guess what drink Lisa likes (he assumes a Seabreeze, when she actually likes Baybreeze).
When boarding, Lisa is pleasantly surprised to find that her seat is next to Jackson’s. After the plane takes off, Rippner reveals that he is a terrorist operative working for a group who intends to assassinate the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Charles Keefe (played by Jack Scalia) and his family, and Lisa is instrumental in their plans because of her job at the Lux Atlantic Hotel (where the Keefe family is staying) as acting manager. If she refuses to cooperate, Rippner will deploy a hitman to kill her father, Joe (played by Brian Cox) at his home in Miami. Reisert has no way of getting help without jeopardizing her father’s safety, and the longer she waits, the harder it will be to prevent the murder.
She tries desperately to save the day. Her first attempt is when the old lady from the check-in line comes to talk to her about the book. She tries to write a warning in the women’s book. However, Rippner later finds out, and he headbutts her unconscious. She tries again by going into the bathroom and writing a warning on the mirror with soap. She tries to leave the bathroom, but is stopped again. Rippner sees the message and shoves her back in.
Lisa begs Rippner not to kill her father. He responds to her by telling her not to gamble with her father’s life. He then notices the scar above Lisa’s breast and begins asking her about the scar’s history. Lisa refuses to answer and Rippner then starts choking her because she is not being honest with him when he had been nothing but brutally honest with her. After letting go of her throat, he starts erasing the writing on the mirror while she is gasping for breath.
The assassination plan is to use a portable missile launcher from a boat in a nearby harbor and fire it at the hotel. The problem is that the Deputy Secretary likes to stay in a different suite, one that faces the city (away from the harbor). In order to assassinate him, Rippner must force Lisa to make a phone call from the airplane and order the hotel staff to change his reservation from Room 3825 to a particular suite (Suite 4080) that faces the harbor.
After one failed attempt due to turbulence from the storm in which the telephone was disconnected, Lisa successfully makes the phone call, and the hotel staff moves the politician to the targeted suite. Rippner still needs Lisa as he can’t let her and her father go until he gets a phone call confirming that the Keefes are successfully assassinated. The Secret Service checks and clears that room, and the Secretary settles in with his family.
After the airplane lands and arrives at the gate, Lisa tells Rippner about the history of her scar, before stabbing Rippner in the throat with a pen, stealing his cell phone and bolting off the plane into the terminal. Lisa runs through the airport, narrowly escaping both airport security and Rippner. She steals an SUV to give herself time to use the cell phone. She makes a cell phone call to the hotel to warn them to evacuate immediately and that the deputy director is a target of an assassination plot. The Secret Service gets the Secretary and his family out of the room just seconds before the Javelin missile is fired and hits the hotel. Her second call is to her father; however, the cell phone battery dies and she is forced to drive to her father’s house in order to save him before Rippner can call the hitman.
At the end of the film, Lisa rushes to her father’s house to see if he’s safe. She finds the hitman (played by Dane Farwell) outside the front door, where she runs him over with the SUV, crashing through the front of the house. Lisa’s father stumbles out of the kitchen, shocked at the man who was lying dead in the foyer and tells her that the police are already on their way.
While Lisa calls her hotel to see if everything is alright, Jackson Rippner shows up and knocks out her father so that he can deal with her first. He chases her through the house with a knife and throws her down a flight of stairs. Lisa crawls down the last few steps, where a gun is lying next to the dead hitman. She threatens Jackson with the gun. Jackson attempts to escape, but Lisa shoots him before he can. He kicks the gun out of her hand and grabs her by the hair when finally, Lisa’s father shoots Rippner as the police arrive, though whether he actually dies is unknown.
At the hotel, the Homeland Secretary and the Secret Service are grateful to Lisa and her assistant Cynthia, who also helped save them by pulling the fire alarm. Lisa and Cynthia then proceed to a bar for some drinks to celebrate.
I’ve seen this movie three times I think. Red Eye action scenes are convincing but it has a ridiculous plot — some say, why conduct an elaborate operation to abduct a hotel manager in mid-flight, and then tell her to transfer a visiting guest at her hotel to another suite so the guest could be assassinated? Hehehe we viewers can barely notice this since we are paying too much attention to the verbal and physical exchanges happening between the two actors.
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