Non-Stop is an impressive example of how star power can both benefit a film and ruin a perfectly good premise.
In the film, Liam Neeson stars as a U.S. Air Marshal whose trans-Atlantic flight is hijacked by an unknown murderer who vows to kill a passenger every 20 minutes, unless their demands are met. A locked room murder mystery in mid-air; not a bad idea. But throw Liam Neeson into that mix and Non-Stop becomes less about story and more about how many ridiculous plane gags the filmmakers could trick Liam Neeson into doing with a straight face before he finally realized that he had been “Punk’d.”
And yes, it is fun to watch Liam Neeson fist fight an entire airplane’s worth of passengers, or use an oxygen mask as a deadly weapon. For many, that will be the only reason to watch Non-Stop, and they will get their money’s worth. Well done, star power. But Non-Stop is structured like a murder mystery in an enclosed space, even though the actual “mystery” part has been rendered inert and pointless because the movie’s attentions are elsewhere, on Liam Neeson coercing a fellow passenger to write a cell phone virus in less than ten minutes. Because making Liam Neeson do that is an easy laugh, and making a detective movie in which the detective does some actual detecting, as opposed to solving a series of arbitrary technology puzzles, would have required some real effort. Screw you, star power.
Second Opinion: Fred Topel says Non-Stop is “better than Air Force One, Turbulence and Flightplan.”
Pretty much all the events that transpire in Non-Stop are ludicrous, and by the end it becomes clear that no master plan was ever in place to get them to make sense. One would expect a big mindblowing reveal that the murderer was [blank] all along, but that would have required forethought. By the time the cards are all on the table, and Non-Stop has the testicular fortitude explain what it’s really about, you’ll find yourself wondering if 13 years after 9/11 is still too soon to be cashing in on airline disasters for cheap melodrama, and debating if maybe we were a little too hard on Snakes on a Plane after all.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra works his hardest to bluff the audience into thinking his mundane potboiler is more exciting than it is, shooting the hell out of that plane and taking obvious delight in filming an entire action sequence within the confines of a tiny bathroom. Neeson commits to the idea that this claptrap deserves to be taken seriously, and successfully – at least once in a while – brings us along for that ride. But when the best part of a high-concept thriller is Lupita Nyong’o’s Grace Jones haircut, it may be best to just put your seat back and sleep through the whole damned flight.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
