As
someone who writes about movies I got quite excited about seeing a film titled
“Non-Stop”. There are so many options to describing the movie in clever and/or
obvious ways, like ‘Non-Stop’ action, or ‘Non-Stop’ suspense, it just screams
to be used. With such lofty expectations based on the title, and because it
stars one of the coolest actors on the planet in Liam Neeson, how could “Non-Stop”
go wrong?
The
story is simple enough; Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is a man going through some
tough times. We know this because the movie opens with him sitting in his car
drinking whiskey from a coffee cup. If Marks was just a normal guy traveling
somewhere it might not be a big deal, but Marks is an Air Marshall. He boards a
plane to London, where we get the “I don’t like flying” bit, even though Marks
flies all the time. Lucky for him a lady named Jen Summers (Julianne Moore)
befriends him and comforts him though his trying time during takeoff. The
flight takes a real turn for the worse when Marks receives a text message
informing him that someone is going to kill a passenger ever 20 minutes, until
he receives $150,000,000. Being an ex-cop, Marks tries to start piecing
together the puzzle. Marks become a bull in a china shop, or a plane in this
case, when he uses brute force in order to figure out who is behind the threat.
Will he be able to figure it out before it becomes too late? Of course! He is
Liam Neeson after all.
I am not really giving anything away
when I say he figures it out, how else could there be a “Non-Stop 2: All
Flights Canceled”? The fun in a film like this lies in you trying to figure out
who it is before Neeson does. While the story by John W, Richardson and
Christopher Roach is good enough, where the film falters is the execution of
that story. It is one of those things that works well in concept, but with an
over-abundance of plot holes, the finished product fails to deliver the promise
of a good movie. Neeson has become the go to guy when you want to make a movie
about a older man saving the day, after the success of
the “Taken” franchise. While the screenplay stumbles, director Jaume
Collet-Serra actually does a decent job, at least until the climatic ending,
where some of the camera choices were not so fun. I wanted to enjoy Non-Stop, I
like ‘Taken” Neeson and ‘The Grey’ Neeson. Instead I am left with a ‘Non-Stop’
let down. Hey, got to use one after all.
Brian Taylor
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