Rachel McAdams

I can’t call myself a Rachel McAdams super-fan. I haven’t seen “The Notebook” or “About Time.” I would rather eat glass than sit through Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder” (I’m certain). But I very much appreciate the profound weirdness of McAdams’s career--from Regina George to a Meg Ryan-ish vehicle (“Morning Glory”), to many months of total silence (who does that?), to Brian de Palma, to “Spotlight,” to light comedy. Throw in a Philip Seymour Hoffman spy movie, along with the second season of “True Detective,” where, it seems, McAdams was the only one who managed to win praise. This is a genius weirdo we’re talking about.

If you look on Wikipedia, you’ll see RM does not have any movies currently in production, and this worries me. During her hiatus, she revealed, “I never really wanted to be a movie star. I never wanted to work outside Canada, or outside the theater.” The theater work seems to have occurred during her college years, and I wonder if she’ll ever return to that. She does seem to be a genuine actor--rather than (simply) a movie star. She says her favorite thing about her career is the opportunity to travel, because she gets to study human behavior in many different regions. (Shades of Julianne Moore in that remark!) McAdams certainly wasn’t born into Hollywood life; she is the daughter of a nurse and a truck driver.

Do you know the thing that really fascinates me about Rachel McAdams? Well, two things. First is all the grace she has in “Spotlight.” Her warmth in the excruciating sit-in-this-cafe-and-tell-me-about-your-molestation-history scene. Her solicitude toward her grandmother when she drops the hey-many-Boston-Catholics-are-evil bomb. (A great deal of McAdams’s most powerful work in this movie is actually wordless, and three cheers for the Academy, for recognizing that.) I love McAdams on the fire escape with Mark Ruffalo, as both wrestle with their Catholic pasts, and with the magnitude of what they are doing, or attempting to do, right now. Can you imagine anyone else in this role--as effective as Ms. McAdams?

The second thing: A small thriller from ten-ish years ago. “Red Eye.” This was a Wes Craven movie, and it’s delightful. Its thesis is: “Only Rachel McAdams can save the world.” Who would disagree? The story is part-Hitchcock, part-“Nightmare on Elm Street,” and so of course I’m on-board. You can most clearly see the Freddy Krueger influence in the climactic scenes, when Cillian Murphy seems to rise from the dead, and he staggers around a house like a zombie. McAdams has punctured his vocal cords with a pen, so he has a wheezing ghost-voice, and he has covered his neck with an eccentric woman’s scarf (stolen in haste from an airplane passenger). The movie becomes what it has not previously been: a slasher flick. We watch McAdams breathing tensely in closets, behind doorways. Knives are wielded. Creative uses are found for a field-hockey stick. Pure pleasure.

Before the horror interlude, the movie is in Hitchcock terrain. That means the screenwriters find joy in identifying wacky, relatable, human moments. The camera lingers over obnoxious teenagers arguing over small bits of personal property; a lesser screenwriter wouldn’t include this. (The argument turns out to have a big role in the movie’s climax, as well--another grace note.) We see a friendly civilian singing the praises of Dr. Phil. A lunatic becomes too belligerent with a beleaguered flight attendant. A harried hotel employee says, to a client, “Why don’t you write that down on a comment card--then stick it up your ass?” A scar on McAdams’s chest has its own mysterious backstory. “It happened in a parking lot, in broad daylight,” says McAdams, toward the end of the movie. “And you thought, oh well, this was totally random?” asks Murphy, in a faux-kind voice. And McAdams, plotting her big revenge, says: “That’s not what I thought. I thought, Never again.” (Now send that ballpoint pen right into Mr. Murphy’s windpipe!)

Mid-film, the two antagonists have a heated exchange in an airplane bathroom. (One has tried to write an SOS with lipstick on a mirror.) The flight attendants get angry; they think they’re overhearing grunts from the mile-high club. Later, one thrusts a plastic bag at the two antagonists, suggestively, and says: “Trash?” She raises an eyebrow.

You won’t discover the meaning of life in “Red Eye,” but you will get to see McAdams with an intelligent script. And you’ll get to see McAdams kicking ass. And so this is a worthwhile movie. Let’s hope RM is not retreating from the spotlight for another two-year spree....