Film Review: Non-Stop

You wouldn’t want to be Liam Neeson’s travel insurer. In Unknown, he flew into Berlin for a conference, only to nearly drown following a car crash and have his identity stolen. In The Grey, his plane crash landed in Alaska and the survivors were hunted down by wolves. And in the Taken franchise he flies frequently to Europe to rescue various kidnapped family members. Let’s not even go there with The A-Team movie.

So you could forgive fellow passengers on British Aqualantic Flight 10 from New York to London for being a little apprehensive as Liam (or Bill Marks as he is here) shuffles forward in the security line. Bill is not in fact a passenger but an air marshal, a troubled, alcoholic one – exactly the type of person you want to have your life in their hands at 35,000 feet.

Just as the captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign and the passengers are getting stuck into the drinks trolley, Bill receives an anonymous SMS from someone on the plane: unless USD 150 million is deposited in a certain bank account, a passenger is going to die every 20 minutes. And murderous mayhem is soon afoot over the Atlantic.

So whodunit? Could it be Jen (Julianne Moore), Bill’s apparently friendly neighbor from business class? Should suspicion fall on the second, sweating, air marshal (Anson Mount) – in which case something has clearly gone badly awry in the Department of Homeland Security’s recruitment processes? Is cabin crewmember Nancy (Michelle Dockery) asking more than “beef or chicken”? Or is it any one of about 12 angry men back in cattle class? It’s up to Bill to solve the clues before the nervous flyers get too alarmed by the in-flight slayings.

A murder mystery with the potential culprits gathered in one location and the sleuth turning his attention to each in turn has strong overtones of Agatha Christie, and the solution shamelessly borrows from her 1935 Hercule Poirot novel Death in the Clouds. Non-Stop is a mile-high mash-up: Christie crossed with Air Force One, Passenger 57 or Flight Plan. The decision to imperil a British airliner – in Hollywood terms more dispensable than an American jet – also recalls Die Hard 2. Yippee-ki-yay, Liam Neeson!

It all makes for high jinks, although recent events render it impossible to watch a movie about a plane potentially crashing into the ocean as suspicion for its plight switches between crew and passengers without the sad specter of missing MH370 coming to mind.

As with Christie, the fun is mainly in the setting out of the premise and the unfolding mystery, rather than the denouement, which is ludicrous. But Liam Neeson action vehicles rest not upon their plausibility, but on the élan with which he hunts down and dispatches bad guys. So when he grandstands, “I’m not a good father! I’m not a good man! But I want to save this plane!” you know it’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy the flick.

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery
On at: Cinema City Cotroceni, Cinema City Sun Plaza, Grand Cinema Digiplex Băneasa, Movieplex Cinema