'Just between us, we would have been overjoyed to find Liam Neeson as the air marshal on this flight.' Photos: Handout
Why do TV characters, who really should know better, do stupid or weird stuff that invariably lands them in trouble? Why, to advance the plot of many a thriller, of course.
The laziness of such writing/plotting aside, this is how it goes for the main bloke in ITV's six-part Red Eye: he fights a nightclub bouncer in Beijing, gets stabbed in the side, drives off, crashes the car in the rain and then walks away – all in the opening minutes.
Rather than report the matter to the authorities, visiting vascular surgeon Matthew Nolan (Richard Armitage, aka the Harlan Coben screen adaptation avatar) patches himself up, catches an earlier flight home to London, and immediately gets detained upon arrival.
What follows is a steadily (downward) spiralling nightmare as Matthew finds himself accused of murder, stuck in holding for hours without being allowed even a phone call, and set for extradition to China.
'Friendly skies? Miles of smiles? You've got your airlines mixed up. I only do surly and stubborn.'
Extradition? Extraordinary rendition, more like it, from the hostile and severe way he is treated by his compatriots – namely, Border Security and the airport police. Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty", fellas?
Seriously, the sheer ill-tempered surliness of Matthew's captors here is so arbitrary that it borders on cartoonish.
Surely it's not just because of his entitled attitude when they stop him at the arrival gate? Or could it be political pressure from shadowy quarters?
My money's on the latter but, long story short, Matthew finds himself on the next flight to Beijing, handcuffed and escorted by detective constable Hana Li (Jing Lusi, Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, Crazy Rich Asians).
This is no "mere" murder case either since it shows up on MI5's radar – that of its director-general Madeline Delaney (Lesley Sharp), no less.
The plots of entire Slow Horses seasons have been built around her position, I'll have you know. And the show wastes little time in showing that this particular "incarnation" of the intelligence agency is in bed with the CIA.
Very quickly too, Red Eye makes it appear as if Matthew is being made a patsy of some kind, along with a few of his peers who are "persuaded" to return to Beijing to testify against him.
A far-reaching conspiracy appears to be afoot, as evident from surreptitious luggage exchanges in airport toilets, shifty-eyed flight personnel who disregard shocking events on board... even an air marshal who inexplicably attacks the one other person on board he knows for sure is a cop.
'What, you were expecting Liam Neeson?'
The set-up here is so loaded with heavy-handed foreshadowing that it reminded me of a story where a paranoid guy gets on a red-eye flight and starts suspecting everyone else on board is a vampire. It turns out to be true, and he winds up as the in-flight meal.
No bloodsuckers here, and it can't be said with certainty that writer Peter A. Dowling was aiming for a potboiler vibe, but that's definitely what we get (interestingly, Dowling was also co-writer of the 2005 mid-air nailbiter Flight Plan with Jodie Foster).
Red Eye – unconnected to another mid-air nailbiter, the similarly-titled Rachel McAdams-Cillian Murphy 2015 thriller – is the kind of ludicrously assembled pressure-cooker thriller where many of the elements don't hold up to the slightest scrutiny.
Anyone familiar with the mid-air thriller sub-genre will find lots of familiarity here, from the previously listed efforts to Idris Elba's Hijack and even this year's Bollywood actioner Yodha with Sidharth Malhotra.
The resulting concoction is a twisty ride where characters drop dead like flies, people exercising their rights get pulled into mysterious vans, Matthew steadily chips away at Hana's indifference to his plight, police and intelligence operatives spill secrets to civilians (like Hana's pesky budding journalist half-sister Jess, played by Jemma Moore) with reckless abandon... in short, it's a hot mess, but you just can't look away.
Providing some kind of anchor here, we have Armitage who switches gears effortlessly from puzzled to entitled to frantic to coolly professional (and, by the end of the mid-way point, mysterious too) in a way only someone so familiar to the TV/streaming viewer base can get away with.
It's largely thanks to him that Red Eye has somehow held its patchwork self together to this point. As to whether or not the stitching survives the landing/final act, well, that's still up in the air.
New episodes of Red Eye air at 9.50pm every Monday on AXN (Astro Ch 701/ Unifi TV Ch 453).
Summary:
Extra-ornery rendition
