Protagonist Lisa Reisert is a hotel manager who is returning to Miami after attending her grandmother's funeral in Texas. As she waits for her flight she gets chatting to Jack Rippner, they share a drink then she is pleasantly surprised when she finds they have adjoining seats on the plane. She isn't pleased for long; as the plane takes off he tells her that their meeting was no coincidence; he had been monitoring her for some time because of her job. He needs her to contact her hotel to change the room allocation for one of their guests; the director of Homeland Security, who is visiting Miami with his family. He makes no secret of the fact that he is an assassin and tells Lisa that she has a choice; she does exactly what he says or an associate of his will kill her father. She delays as long as she can but eventually makes the call and has the room changed
now she will have to find a way to save both her father and the Director of Homeland Security and his family.
Too often a film like this would be stretched to two hours and have a variety of unnecessary twists; director Wes Craven didn't do that; he kept it short and once we have learnt what Jack is doing there are no real surprises. He doesn't even waste time trying to explain why the Director of Homeland Security is being targeted Lisa doesn't need to know so neither do we; all anybody needs to know is that if she doesn't do as she is told her father will die; it's that simple. Rachel McAdams does a solid job as Lisa making the character believable and Cillian Murphy is suitably disturbing as the apparently charming Jack; the rest of the cast, which includes Brian Cox and Jayma Mays, are pretty good too. Clichés of the genre are nicely avoided; I was sure Jack would kill at least one person on the plane but the worst thing he did to any of the other passengers was steal a book. There are of course some rather unrealistic details at one point Jack head-butts Lisa hard enough to knock her out for half an hour but when she wakes she merely has a mild headache rather than a serious concussion! As the story approaches its conclusion the action is increased and we get explosions and finally a taut final confrontation between Lisa and Jack. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody looking for a decent, but not overly long, thriller which is tense without containing any really disturbing material.
Too often a film like this would be stretched to two hours and have a variety of unnecessary twists; director Wes Craven didn't do that; he kept it short and once we have learnt what Jack is doing there are no real surprises. He doesn't even waste time trying to explain why the Director of Homeland Security is being targeted Lisa doesn't need to know so neither do we; all anybody needs to know is that if she doesn't do as she is told her father will die; it's that simple. Rachel McAdams does a solid job as Lisa making the character believable and Cillian Murphy is suitably disturbing as the apparently charming Jack; the rest of the cast, which includes Brian Cox and Jayma Mays, are pretty good too. Clichés of the genre are nicely avoided; I was sure Jack would kill at least one person on the plane but the worst thing he did to any of the other passengers was steal a book. There are of course some rather unrealistic details at one point Jack head-butts Lisa hard enough to knock her out for half an hour but when she wakes she merely has a mild headache rather than a serious concussion! As the story approaches its conclusion the action is increased and we get explosions and finally a taut final confrontation between Lisa and Jack. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody looking for a decent, but not overly long, thriller which is tense without containing any really disturbing material.