What the Flick

RED EYE asks us to believe that some bad guys would go to the trouble to have their spooky-eyed (but handsome) colleague (BATMAN BEGINS' and 28 DAYS LATER's Cillian Murphy) wait in line behind a girl (WEDDING CRASHERS' Rachel McAdams), run into and buy a drink for that same girl at the airport bar during a weather delay, get the seat next to that girl on the flight and thus be able alternately to befriend and terrorize her (partly by using her credit card to make a $3 a minute Airfone call!), chase her through the airport upon landing and then to her house, where an epic battle takes place, all for what? To get a renegade nuclear weapon? To thwart some Big Pharma plot to keep secret the cure for cancer? To find Osama bin Laden? No, no, you're thinking too big my friend. It's all to get her to change the suite that some government bigwig is staying in at the swanky waterfront Miami hotel where she works so the bad guys can fire a rocket-propelled grenade at him from their conspicuously placed "fishing" boat in Biscayne Bay. There are so many questions, with why all the terrorizing had to happen on an airplane being only the most obvious. The movie delivers some shocks and the stars are both adorable, but ultimately it is like an episode of that great old cheesy show HOTEL (where did Shari Belafonte Harper get off to?) or the truly bad current show LAS VEGAS, where comic and tragic and dramatic events are going on under one roof. Then the girl at the theater told us it had the best trick ending. And, like, yeah, if by "trick ending" she meant exactly what you think is going to happen happens.

Then there is FLIGHTPLAN, which on the upside brings Jodie Foster back to the screen, but on the downside could be simply described as "RED-EYE with a missing kid." This time the plot involves a dead-from-suicide husband, his super-high tech casket, a distraught wife who happens to be a jet-engine engineer (Jodie Foster), an adorable big-eyed 6-year-old daughter who disappears midflight, Berlin scenery, the world's chattiest air marshall (Peter Sarsgaard), some brusque German flight crew members, a pit stop in Newfoundland, and the gal I like to call "Walmart Angelina Jolie" (Kate Beahan) because of the way her over-stuffed lips cheaply bring to mind the real thing. Again, people with too much time on their hands and too much faith in coincidence set up the World's Most Complicated Scenario in the simple pursuit of ill-gotten funds and a Gulfstream III. Yes, too small-minded to even ask for a Gulfstream V, these villains get exactly what they deserve. It's always good to see Jodie, but I'd like her to get out of this rut playing Tiger Moms protecting their cubs. At least the kid's scenes here were few (not endlessly annoying like those in PANIC ROOM), and the airplane setting, while limited, allowed for some variety (first class, coach, the rest rooms, the cargo hold, and even the cockpit!). But the action consists mostly of Jodie pushing fellow passengers out of the way (really, I've been on Lufthansa, and they don't let 'Volk' party in the aisles like that) as she runs from one end of the plane to another, yelling about her missing kid and the closets not checked, and -- always an awesomely good idea on a plane today -- banging on the cockpit door and demanding to see the pilot. Surprisingly, people on the plane think she's nuts. I just thought she was pissed to see what she got for 5 Euros in her "buy on board" meal box.

As thrillers set on airplanes go, neither FLIGHTPLAN nor RED EYE can hold a runway beacon to EXECUTIVE DECISION (with Kurt Russell as the hunky scientist and Halle Berry as the heroic flight attendant) or Harrison Ford-as-President's AIR FORCE ONE, and isn't even as good as the Wesley Snipes' jet-tastic PASSENGER 55. If you want to scare yourself before your next flight, rent those babies and settle in for some high-speed action. Leave FLIGHTPLAN for the sissies.