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Intriguing story, but loopholes doom 'Red Eye'

In horror movies, where Wes Craven made his reputation, internal logic hardly matters as long as you deliver the shock waves.

With the thriller genre, however, loopholes in the plot can be deadly. So it is with Red Eye, Craven's terror in the unfriendly skies yarn, rendered terminally inauthentic by a screenplay from rookie Carl Ellsworth.

Dreamworks SKG 'Red Eye' C- The verdict: A fly-by-night thriller with an able cast, but way too many plot holes. Director: Wes Craven Starring: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jack Scalia, Jayma Mays Run time: 85 minutes Release date: August 19, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for some intense sequences of violence, and language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Red Eye"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Those who fear flying will surely identify with sweaty-palmed Lisa Reisert (perky Rachel McAdams of the current Wedding Crashers), even before she sits down next to a preppy terrorist known as Jackson (Cillian Murphy, Batman Begins). Taking a rain-delayed overnight flight back home to Miami, the last thing she reckoned on was a guy who threatens to kill her father unless she cooperates in the assassination of the Homeland Security deputy secretary.

You see, Lisa is a manager at a South Beach hotel where the anti-terrorism czar is about to check in and — if Jackson gets his way — explosively check out. Can she keep her multi-tasking cool under pressure and outsmart the bad guy, 30,000 feet in the air, with only a bag of pretzels for a weapon?

OK, just kidding about the pretzels, but Red Eye does turn on our collective air travel dread and paranoia over being voluntarily trapped in a metal tube hurling through the sky, conscious since 9/11 of how quickly a plane can become a missile.

For the first two-thirds of Red Eye, Lisa is held hostage in her seat by Jackson, except for a wily attempt to summon help by scrawling a note on the lavatory mirror. Eventually, though, Craven and Ellsworth exhaust the potential in the airborne cat-and-mouse game, which continues on the ground with a stalker third act that could have come straight from a Scream installment.

Perhaps if the minimal story had been more involving, we would not notice the plot and continuity flaws. Still, if the sub-secretary's security goons are as good as claimed, why do they let him accept such an unprotected, ocean view room? Why aren't the hotels elevators incapacitated when the fire alarm is pulled? Why, when Lisa escapes from the landed plane by jumping past the other passengers, are they all politely seated in subsequent scenes?

After going to lengths to establish how efficient Jackson is, does he really seem to be someone who would let his cellphone battery run down? These days, could there really be a foot chase through an airport without federal marshals getting involved? I could go on — Wouldn't the Homeland Security honcho be whisked out of the hotel after the assassination attempt, instead of hanging around to banter with the manager? — but you get the idea.

Despite all these preposterous plot snafus, McAdams and Murphy almost make their mental battle work. She is wily and resourceful, yet vulnerable, an easy subject for audience empathy. Murphy looks boyish, but there's a nut case hiding behind those eyes, one who is obviously wound way too tightly. As Lisa's dad, a slimmed-down Brian Cox handles his small, sketchy role well enough and bubbly Jayma Mays makes a positive impression as the front desk clerk who inherits all the crises in Lisa's absence.

Craven stages the action — and the extensive inaction — efficiently, but cannot muster the speed to get this movie past its inconsistencies. If he isn't going to take the care to think out each twist, he might as well stick to horror movies.