NON-STOP – The Review

If you’re looking for Oscar-caliber entertainment this Oscar weekend, look somewhere else but for a fun time at the movies, I recommended NON-STOP, which is less an action film than an old-fashioned locked-in-the-box whodunnit. During a transatlantic flight from New York City to London (on the fictional Aqualantic airlines) grizzled, hard-drinking U.S. Air Marshal Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) receives a series of cryptic text messages demanding that he instruct the government to transfer $150 million into an off-shore account. Until he secures the money, a passenger on his flight will be killed every 20 minutes. As Bill struggles to find who the murderer is, the ground crew is convinced that he himself has hijacked the aircraft.

On balance, NON-STOP is a lot of fun. It takes its absurd premise, which is basically “How do you kill someone on a crowded plane and get away with” and keeps it focused, never wasting a moment while pushing its growling hero through obstacle after obstacle. There are a few too many twists and turns towards the end and some aspects err toward the ridiculous, such as the passengers watching their own drama unfold on cable news, but the moments of silliness are more than balanced by director Jaume Collet-Serra ability to maintain flight-worthy suspense (despite countless scenes of Neeson tapping text messages into his phone). As the film progresses, the claustrophobic tension does not give way to overblown digital effects and big action scenes. There is an explosion and some gunfire, but most if the fun is had guessing who the culprit is from amongst the 150 passengers/suspects (spoiler: it’s not the turban-clad mid-easterner).

Liam Neeson is the same “particular set of skills” hero he’s been playing a lot lately but you buy what he’s selling, especially in scenes like the one where he quietly kills someone in an airplane toilet. The rest of cast is uniformly capable and like Neeson, dead serious. Julianne Moore scores as a shady nervous passenger while Oscar front-runner Lupita Nyong’o as a frightened stewardess is given little to do except looks cool in her Grace Jones afro. I wish the producers had gone the AIRPORT route and peppered the cast with D-list celebs –maybe a Kardashian as a stewardess or Jimmy Walker could have recreated his role as Boisie, the sax-playing, pot-smoking passenger from CONCORDE – AIRPORT ’79 (a side note – I just watched all the AIRPORT movies in reverse chronological order and have concluded that series actually got better as it progressed). NON-STOP borrows heavily from other in-flight disasters, and though the formula may be old, it’s an expertly handled and delivers enough fun to overlook its plot holes so just enjoy it for the thrill ride that it is.

3 1/2 of 5 Stars