Field-Hockey-Stick-Fu

I'm trying to find a subject I can be brief on today, for I still need to work on my taxes and I've felt gross all day and would like an early night.

Oh, okay: the end of Red Eye pisses me right off. I think it's a neat little thriller for the most part. The heavy claustrophobia of setting the key events in a pair of airline seats is lovely and largely well-handled. Short of locking two people in a coffin together, it's hard to imagine a way to slice the movie down any more; talk about cutting out the fat. Those are, obviously, the movie's best scenes, partly because Craven handles them masterfully and partly because Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy do likewise. McAdams is just complicated enough for a thriller heroine -- a little generic, sure, but that's not necessarily a major drawback in a genre where identification with the heroine is key. On the other hand, Murphy is unique and weird and specific: not a psycho, not at all, merely a businessman. (A really bad one -- what kind of professional would take only one hostage? if she refuses initially, you've got no leverage to persuade her -- but I'm certainly overthinking that one.) His Jack Ripner here and the Scarecrow in Batman Begins both showcase his ability to play a larger-than-life character without raising his voice or veering into Nicholsonville.

I've got to say: never sat next to anybody that handsome on an airplane. Also no one as evil, as far as I know, but still.

At least, until the ending, and that's what ticks me off. The climax demands that Ripner go completely, inconsistently berserk, which is annoying. But I could deal with it.

No, the part where I start headdesking is in the final moments of the film, when Lisa gets completely blindsided by a Sarah Connor Classic. The SCC is named after the moment at the end of Terminator 2 when Sarah Connor has the T1000 dead to rights, splayed into a blob and teetering on the edge of a precipice over a pit of molten metal. In that moment, Sarah has won the day -- she is the Ripley, she is the hero.

Except. Of course. Her pump-action shotgun -- which she has been (heroically) operating one-handed because T1000 put a spike through one of her shoulders -- jams. T1000 recovers; her victory is lost, and she has to wait for Arnold to come along and save her skin. It's one of the most anti-feminist moments in what I generally think of as an awesomely feminist movie (and I'll talk about that at some point too).

I'd thought of it as a "It's Superman's book, you idiot" moment, after an argument that two Buffy characters get into about why Lex Luthor can't win at the end. The movies are called "The Terminator," so in the end it's got to be about The Terminator. Red Eye, though, has no such excuses. If it has any obligation, it is to provide us with a Craven-style Final Girl.

For monster-fighting, I gotta say, I'm all over the field hockey stick.

Lisa has won. She kicked his ass. She did it with a field hockey stick. We love her. Ripner is crippled and hers for the killing. She shoots the motherfucker.

Victory!

But he lunges, knocks the gun away, grabs her by the fucking hair -- and who fires the killing bullet? Her dad. You know, the one who was unconscious on the floor a minute earlier.

AAAAAARGH.

WHY?

It's a rhetorical question. We know why.