Please help, I can’t stop thinking about this final line.
This whole thing is going to make me sound like a mad person, but I don’t care. This needs to be talked about.
Final lines are very important in movies, they’re literally what you leave the audience with before sending them out into the streets to discuss and process what they’ve just watched.
“It was beauty killed the beast.” “The truth is… I am Iron Man.” “I think this might just be my masterpiece.” “Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.” “You met me at a very strange time in my life.”
Some movies absolutely nail that final dispatch.
And then there are movies that don’t. And then there is Red Eye. Now, we’re going to spoil the entire film below so if you’ve not seen it, it’s actually a very fun 85-minute film and it’s on Netflix right now so maybe go do that first, but do be sure to read my nervous breakdown below.
Ready? Let’s do this.
The claustrophobic thriller directed by the late, great Wes Craven (Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street) sees a hotel manager, Lisa (Rachel McAdams), being tormented by a fellow passenger, Jackson (Cillian Murphy), on her overnight flight. He needs her to make a call to move a powerful politician into a different hotel room to make it easier for an impending assassination to be carried out.
However, before they even get on the flight, Lisa and Jackson share a semi-meet cute in the bar at the airport, before he reveals his full intentions.
Sitting at a bar waiting for their flight number to be called, Jackson tries to guess Lisa’s drink order…
Pretty close, right?
It would be an impressive ice-breaker if an attractive stranger were able to guess your drink order.
But once they get on board the flight, Lisa and Jackson discover they’re also sitting right beside each other on the flight, and it is here that Jackson reveals his true colours. He orders Lisa to swap the politician’s rooms, or he’ll have her father (Brian Cox) killed instead.
At first she doesn’t believe him, then tries to fight him (which doesn’t go well for her), then the phones go down due to a lightning storm. During a trip to the bathroom, Lisa tries to leave a warning on the mirror, but Jackson discovers her and reveals he’s actually been following Lisa for some time now…
So it turns out that Lisa lied about her drinks order, just so she didn’t let Jackson have the upper hand on knowing her too well.
From there, the rest of the flight doesn’t go great for either of them, with Lisa forced to ask the politician to head into the assassination-ready hotel room (along with his entire family), and then she stabs Jackson in the throat with a pen.
There’s a frantic chase through the airport, all the way back to Lisa’s father’s home. On the way, she warns her work pal Cynthia (Jayma Mays) of the nefarious murder plot, who then pulls the fire alarm for the hotel, saving the politician and his family from a rocket launcher attack!
There’s a fight in Lisa’s father’s home, and eventually Jackson is defeated. Hooray. So far, so good.
But then Lisa visits the hotel, which, for some reason, hasn’t been entirely closed off, despite the top floor being destroyed by – and I can’t stress this enough – a rocket launcher attack.
Lisa and Cynthia reunite in the reception of the hotel, and this interaction happens:
What?
WHAT??
The hotel is on fire, after a ROCKET LAUNCHER ASSAULT. The bar won’t be open, this whole place is a crime scene!
You literally just stabbed a man in his throat with a pen, nearly died several times in the last three hours, and then shot and killed a man with help from your dad, who was also just very nearly killed.
Also, Cynthia giggling along with the “bay breeze” line? She has no idea what you’re talking about, Lisa! She wasn’t at the airport when you lied to Jackson about your drink order. This line isn’t for Cynthia, this is for *us*, the audience, to go “‘Member, earlier, that was the drink? ‘Member??”
Cynthia’s response should be, “A bay breeze? What? What are you talking about? You don’t drink bay breezes. You drink sea breezes. Why would you tell me the one drink that you don’t want? What are you talking about?”
I’m sorry, but I’ve rewatched this movie quite recently and this interaction has been going over and over and over in my mind and I can’t stop thinking about unbelievably fucking stupid it is.
But the rest of the movie is actually pretty good.
Red Eye has just been added to Netflix. Enjoy.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
