Just minding their business ...

The innocent individual who gets drawn into dangerous intrigue is a fixture of the silver screen. Think Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill in Alfred Hitchcock’s landmark 1959 thriller “North by Northwest.” Think Goldie Hawn’s San Francisco librarian in Colin Higgins’ 1978 comedy caper “Foul Play.” Think Jamie Foxx’s Los Angeles cab driver in Michael Mann’s 2004 neon-noir assassination orgy “Collateral.” And think Rachel McAdams’ girl-next-door-type hotel clerk Lisa Reisert, who finds herself forced to become an accessory to murder in Wes Craven’s air-to-ground nightmare “Red Eye,” which opened Friday.

Each of these characters is going about his or her business when murderous doings are thrust upon them. Grant’s Thornhill is a Madison Avenue adman meeting some associates for cocktails at the Plaza when he is abducted by men who mistake him for someone else. Hawn’s shy bookworm, Gloria Mundy, is simply doing her job when a dying man leaves in her possession a microcassette, one that leads to a convoluted mystery involving a plan to assassinate the pope. Foxx’s cabby, Max, is pulling his night shift when he has the bad luck to pick up Tom Cruise’s contract killer, Vincent, a guy with a long night of hits ahead of him. McAdams’ Lisa is flying home to Miami after a funeral for her maternal grandmother, and the flight is already bumpy enough when her seatmate, a seemingly all-American flirt, Cillian Murphy’s Jackson Rippner, puts her in figurative thumb screws.

Part of the thrill of these pictures comes from the idea that these characters could be any of us, that the routine of anyone’s life can suddenly be turned upside down. In real life these scenarios can be less than appealing, but they are a great ride inside the safety of a Hollywood screenplay, in which most plots of this nature call for happy endings.

The thrill also comes from the depiction of these characters as being a lot like most of us in other ways. They have no special qualifications for getting out of trouble. They are not off-duty cops who find themselves battling terrorists when an office Christmas party goes bad (“Die Hard”). They are not Special Forces agents on leave when trouble starts (“Walking Tall”). They cannot fly planes, if called upon to do so (“Executive Decision”). And they are definitely not Jason Bourne or James Bond.

These characters are average people who are going to have to use above-average smarts and untapped, untested extremes of courage to get themselves and possibly others out of deep trouble. Taken off-guard by skilled and well-organized opponents, they have no choice but to do what they can to turn the tables.

It is a feature of most of these films that the characters need a bit of persuasion to accept what is happening to them and to come to terms with the gravity of the situation. When Roger Thornhill is muscled into the back of a taxi, he jests, “All right. Don’t tell me where we’re going. Surprise me!” But when his kidnappers later punctuate his interrogation by pouring a bottle of alcohol down his throat, he begins to see (despite double vision) that this is not a game. In “Collateral,” Max knows he is in the soup the minute a bloody corpse lands atop his meticulously polished cab, shattering both its windshield and Max’s sense of security. And Lisa finds herself a believer the instant her seatmate produces her father’s wallet and describes exactly where in his house it was found (“next to your graduation photo”).

Cinema’s innocent bystanders attempt to get help, or they would lose all credibility with audiences. But their efforts are in vain. Some are disbelieved; others’ attempts to call for aid are thwarted by their captors.

In one hilarious scene in “North by Northwest,” Grant’s Thornhill appeals to police, a judge and his mother, explaining he has been kidnapped and that his life has been threatened. After a cursory investigation, the charges are dismissed and Thornhill is ridiculed. (In a following scene, when Thornhill and his mother find themselves in a closed elevator car with the kidnappers, she turns to the men and, with evident amusement, says, “You gentlemen aren’t really trying to kill my son, are you?”)

When Hawn’s Gloria explains to the police that she is being pursued by a midget and an albino, she is asked if she has taken acid. When Foxx’s cabby first tries to get help, the killer swiftly and forcefully lets him see the error of his ways. And when Lisa attempts to signal for aid, her seatmate has a shocking way of making her silent.

Survival of screen innocents depends on a brand of spontaneous resourcefulness that would make James Bond proud (especially because they have none of the fancy gadgets provided by Q). Because these innocents are unaware of what fate has in store for them, they come into their roles unarmed and unprotected. They have no guns, no ammo and no superhero tricks. If they have cellphones, the battery tends to be low, or the reception is no good. Thornhill’s best weapons are his wit (thanks to one of the world’s great screenplays, by Ernest Lehman) and his athletic ability (which comes in especially handy when he must outrun a crop duster). Max has a will to live and to do the right thing, both of which are galvanized when a pretty passenger he flirted with earlier in the evening, Jada Pinkett Smith’s federal prosecutor, shows up on Vincent’s hit list. In “Red Eye,” Lisa is armed with little more than a self-help book, and her battle begins on its pages.

Half the fun of watching any of these films is seeing the way in which characters adapt the objects of everyday living into survival gear. Thornhill, with help from his sometime companion, Eva Marie Saint’s mysterious Eve Kendall, uses train compartments, pencil tracings, auction etiquette, a matchbook and a missing earring to outwit his enemies. Max does wonders with a briefcase and his cab. Lisa finds creative uses for the soap dispensed in the airline bathroom, a ballpoint pen, a restaurant menu and, when the action leaves the plane and hits the ground running, flower vases and a field-hockey stick that substitute for lethal weapons.

As the genre of innocents-in-peril pictures makes clear, a life can change in an instant.

It helps to carry a pen.

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Deborah Hornblow is a film critic at the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.