Non-Stop is a typical locked-room thriller. One that confines Liam Neeson to the cabin of a transatlantic plane flight, so you can pretty much forget any elaborately planned action set pieces. So, instead of playing to Neeson’s strengths as a grizzled action star, the movie becomes complacent by having Neeson march around the plane’s cabin, yelling at people and texting a would-be terrorist who’s going to kill one passenger every 20 minutes.
Neeson plays Bill Marks, an alcoholic Federal Air Marshal with a penchant for paranoia. You know, the perfect guy you want protecting a plane full of civilians. His flaws as a human being will come into focus later, but only as a ploy to get the cockamamie plot off the ground. Bill soon receives a conversation of cryptic texts from an unknown sender. Threatening messages stating that passengers are going to die unless $150 million is transferred to a certain account. The messages are coming from someone on the plane over a secured federal network.
So, now that we have the setup, the rest of the movie simply runs through the paces of bygone airplane action thrillers. People start dying, and Bill runs around the cabin unlawfully searching people, trying to find out who is behind the devious plot. It’s nearly impossible to list the movie’s entire stream of plot contrivances, but holy moly are there a ton of them. Almost like someone on set has a checklist of action movie clichés, and they’re ticking them off one by one.
Due to the close quarters, the action here is less action and more chaos. Another entry into the increasingly mundane list of action movies without any discernible action. Director Jaume Collet-Serra swings his handheld cameras around in the guise of realism. The finished products are cut-up, hand-to-hand combat sequences where frenzied close-ups of body parts are pieced together into some semblance of cohesive action. The movie’s sound mix, especially any fight-oriented sound effects, has been cranked up way above the tolerable threshold. This is usually a byproduct of chaotic action sequences. Instead of easy-to-understand visuals, the director and the sound crew try to keep your brain from going bonkers by directing the action with overly loud sound effects. This creates the illusion of action, when very little action acting is going on.
So, the action in the movie doesn’t have much substance. How about the story? Sadly, it’s just as brain dead. Somehow the screenplay concocted here has made a Liam Neeson action vehicle a complete bore. The mystery isn’t all that intriguing and when you find out who’s doing it, shaking your head may be the only course of action. The writers paint themselves into a corner as they build what they perceive is a clever mystery. However, once they’re called upon to reveal what’s happening, who’s doing it, and why, whatever momentum the movie had going for it grinds to a halt. The movie’s aspirations deflate into a been-there-done-that conclusion that, to be truthful, matches up well with the been-there-done-that thriller that came before.
There’s nothing remotely new or creative about Non-Stop. Even its idea of flashing text messages up on the screen, floating around a concerned Neeson, is done better and more effectively by BBC’s Sherlock.
As far as action thrillers go, Non-Stop falls somewhere between run-of-the-mill and disappointment. Neeson, and audiences, deserve better.
