TV Pick of the Week: Red Eye - review by Yvette Huddleston
This tense thriller is probably not one for the nervous flier but if you are of a tougher constitution, it’s worth a look. Richard Armitage plays clinician and academic Dr Matthew Nolan who after attending a conference in Beijing, ends up in a spot of bother.
The opening sequence sees him stumbling out of a nightclub, looking the worse for wear and getting into a car which he is clearly unfit to drive and he has a stab wound in his stomach. He crashes the car but somehow manages to get back to his hotel room. Then we see him arriving at Heathrow airport where he is immediately arrested by border police and taken away to be questioned. He is accused of the murder of a young woman – who is the daughter of a senior Chinese general and whose body was found in the car he abandoned. He strongly protests his innocence but the Chinese government are insisting that he is extradited back to Beijing immediately to face the charges.
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Hide AdThis extradition has been reluctantly agreed to by head of MI5 Madeline Delaney (Lesley Sharp) under pressure from the British government who are eager not to jeopardise future Chinese relations, and trade deals (which is probably the most believable bit of a sometimes credibility straining plot). Meanwhile Met police detective Hana Li (Jing Lusi) is being hauled into her boss’s office and told that she is to accompany Dr Nolan on the flight back to Beijing. It’s not a job she wants particularly, and is annoyed that she has been chosen purely because of her Chinese heritage, but she has no choice in the matter.
So, she heads to Heathrow where she meets Nolan and dismisses his protestations of innocence. He tries to do a runner and encourages airport passengers to film him as he makes a short speech claiming he is being set up. It goes viral, which MI5 and others are not happy about. Hana just wants to do her job and she is kept busy as on the flight back to Beijing all sorts of bad things happen, including sabotage-induced turbulence, a dog poisoning and three murders…
Meanwhile DC Li’s younger half-sister Jess (Jemma Moore) a would-be journalist, who has already rubbed her older sibling up the wrong way on a previous attempt at a scoop, is desperate to get the story and, unwisely, begins to do some investigating of her own.