6.5 of 10
Personal
Bias Alert: likes well thought out
thrillers, haven’t kept up with the “Liam Neeson is an action star” trend
We
had to wait until the end of February for Liam Neeson’s latest action thriller. This one boasts an impressive supporting
cast, and after seeing it, I’m at a loss to explain how they were
assembled. Was there a really impressive
early draft of the script? Did everyone decide
to cash in? Does everyone just really
likes Neeson? The finished product
certainly doesn’t deserve them.
“Non-Stop” is a forgettable affair with a few decent twists, but it
falls too often into familiar territory to be truly thrilling.
Neeson
stars as Bill Marks, an air marshal on a hijacked plane trying to suss out who
the actual hijacker is. His only
communication with the hijacker is though text messages, which tell him that a
person will be killed every twenty minutes until money is transferred into a bank
account. The situation quickly escalates,
but to reveal any more would do the film a disservice. Julianne Moore, Scoot McNairy, Nate Parker,
and Corey Stoll co-star as passengers, while Michelle Dockery and Lupita
Nyong’o play flight attendants.
Marks
is, of course, a troubled soul, and Neeson plays him with a weathered
determination we’ve seen him do before.
Julianne Moore’s character has her own secrets, but she and Michelle
Dockery’s flight attendant prove to be Marks’s most loyal supporters. Universally, the actors do fine with their roles. No one stands out, neither good nor bad. They appear as required, and most of them
manage to pull off even the more obvious of the plot machinations.
The
plane plays a large role in the film and is used very effectively. It’s a small space, even if it is one of the
relatively roomy jets used for transatlantic flights. Obviously no one can leave, but the cabin’s
layout also makes it easy for Marks to keep tabs on everyone. It wears on him, as he stands staring at his
mass of suspects, that he can’t identify which person is the hijacker. The passengers stare back also, frightened
and slowly losing faith in their protector.
It’s a classic potboiler, but the plane doesn’t give them room to
release the tension.
Where
“Non-Stop” falters is in its script. It’s flat out predictable, following a course
we’ve all seen before. If the twists
were better, or the characters more interesting, then it could have elevated
itself above the faults of its genre.
They manage a few clever things, like explaining how in the world
someone could kill a person on a plane and not get caught, but it also goes for
some cheap thrills, making me unable to consider it smart. The characters are simply bland. You get who they are from the first time they
are introduced, and none of them really change.
Without decent twists or characters, a thriller falls flat.
“Non-Stop”
ended up reminding me greatly of “Flightplan.”
Remember “Flightplan?” Neither do
I.
Other
Notes:
Ø This
movie has several really funny moments.
My favorite is what Marks offers to the passengers to make them calm
down.
Ø I
like that Marks goes after the age-appropriate woman.
Ø Does
putting tape over the smoke detector really work?
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