Non-Stop

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Liam, what were you thinking? There HAVE to be better scripts out there. Don't waste your immense talent on lightweight scripts and directors like this. This film was so bad, it is hard to know where to start. How about the Air Marshal Service hiring a drunk cop fired from a major police force? Never gonna happen. How about there somehow magically appearing a hole from the lavatory to the secured cockpit? And the air pressure being lower in the cockpit than the cabin -- which is the opposite of the real world. How about the copilot assuring the air marshal he would not unlock the cockpit door for the rest of the flight then, 10 seconds later is seen in the doorway talking to a flight attendant. How about bad guys intending to parachute from an airliner with apparently no way to do so? How about the bad guys counting on Liam Neeson's character killing another air marshal in a fight -- and, for that matter, getting into the fight -- despite the fact that supposedly Liam's character is a drunk and both men are armed? And then there are the terrible special effects. Did they think we would buy a blue screen with a model airplane behind the actors. (Either that or really weak CGI). Come on. And the acting. Oh,the acting. Sometimes they cut away from the face of a character, dub in a line, then cut back to the face. Pretty transparent cover-up of terrible acting and directing. And the actor supposedly flying the plane looked like he was playing with his kid's toy. To reduce power you pull, not push the lever, for example. No wonder he crashes an apparently flyable plane (even the gear came down and all the controls worked), and he was already in the flare to land. Beyond which, it was getting pretty boring about an hour into it. The absurd and obvious mis-directions throughout were not only obvious, they were like yelling "Hey, this guy looks like a bad guy. I'll bet it's him." The script would have read better if it was written as a thriller, not a mystery. Tell us who the bad guy is and then the audience can yell "Look out! He's behind you." Instead we were yelling, "Give me a break. This is ridiculous already." This film would be a good candidate for the next iteration of Mystery Science 3000 so at least we can get a laugh at the awesome awfulness of it all.

There is something rather compelling about action films set on aircraft. The claustrophobic confinement and obvious dangers of guns, decompressions and - erm - gravity naturally add to the sense of peril. Examples of the genre are Air Force One, Passenger 57, United 93, Airport 77/79/etc. and (at the ridiculous end of the spectrum) Snakes On A Plane. Some films in this category try to mix the action with a mystery plot (Jodie Foster's Flightpath was a case in point), although after the real-life mystery of the Malaysian Airline Flight 370 jet in recent weeks no film drama could hope to compete. Non-Stop tries to join both of these sub- genres by wrapping a mystery into an action film. It largely fails in the former and partially succeeds in the latter. Plot-wise, Non-Stop is arrant nonsense. Liam Neeson - the go-to action hero of the hour - plays Air Marshall Bill Marks: a chain-smoking alcoholic, with a tragic family past, who is the last person you would trust to wave a gun around on a flight. Bill Marks boards a London-bound 'Aqualantic' flight (REALLY? Would you REALLY want to link a transatlantic airline brand with water?). Mid-Atlantic Marks is sent messages on his secure Air Marshall network (clearly not THAT secure) from someone on the plane threatening to kill someone every 20 minutes until they are paid 150 million dollars into an offshore account. It emerges that Marks is either the terrorist himself (the account is in his name) or is being set up by someone to appear to be the terrorist. A chief suspect would appear to be one of Mark's fellow passengers in business class, played by Julianne Moore: someone living life to the full with a big scar on her chest and with nothing to lose. As the body count rises, questions arise as to who the terrorist is, why they are they doing it, how they are doing it, who will be murdered next and - most importantly - does any of this make any sense at all? Liam Neeson is in "Taken" mode and as personable and effective as always. Michelle Dockery (of "Downton Abbey") plays air stewardess Nancy, and the film is also notable for featuring Lupita Nyong'o as another of the stewardesses, before her breakout recognition in "12 Years a Slave" (one assumes that the Oscar judges voted before seeing this). Whilst the plot was nonsense - leaving more open questions than answers - it was quite enjoyable nonsense, and I should add that my wife absolutely loved it (although it should also be pointed out that Air Force One is her favourite film!). I have to confess that I found the ending uproariously funny. No spoilers, but in a number of scenes the classic lines from "Airplane!" leapt unhindered into my head: specifically "Auntie M - It's a Twister, It's a Twister"; "I just want to say Good Luck. We're all counting on you" and Robert Stack's post-crash speech to Ted Striker. Popcorn fun - but not a classic. (If you enjoyed this review, please see more on bobmann447.wordpress.com, and sign up to 'Follow the Fad'. Thanks.)