Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Taken) continues his one great movie, one terrible movie, one great movie, one terrible movie streak with the intense Non-Stop, perhaps the second most exciting airplane movie ever made (and no, I’m not ranking it behind Snakes on a Plane). I think Air Force One set the standard back in 1997, but Non-Stop is precisely that…nonstop. It’ll keep you glued to the screen for its 1 hour 47 minute running time. Is this movie plausible? Absolutely not. Does that deter from the experience? Only if you’ll let it. Are the coincidences totally out of control? Of course, they are. But if you want to be entertained with an action-oriented whodunit, you could do much worse. I wish I had seen this movie on the big screen. So far, 2014 has been terrible for film, but Non-Stop is the best movie of the year’s first half.

Liam Neeson is an onscreen badass. There is no other way to describe him. I’m often confused about his choice of roles, though. I haven’t even heard of battleship, Taken 2, The A-Team, and a bunch of other movies. I feel he should use the commercial successes of films like Taken, Unknown, and The Grey better and choose better roles. Maybe he doesn’t need to average five movies a year over the past five years. I’m not going to say not to take the money, but he seems to be doing okay for himself. Long story short…I love a good Liam Neeson movie but dislike immensely a bad Liam Neeson movie. And for the record, while I LOVED both Taken and The Grey, I was not a big fan of Unknown.

This movie is neat. Neeson stars as a depressed alcoholic air marshal named Bill Marks. Unceremoniously released from a previous job, he finds himself safekeeping the sky even though he hates flying. The movie is about a potential terrorist situation on a transatlantic flight from New York City to London. Over a secure network, one of the hundreds of passengers on the flight promises that he will kill one passenger every 20 minutes unless $150 million is wired to an account in a series of text messages to Marks. It is the job of Marks to prevent this from happening, of course, and he uses all the tools he has at his disposal to act as quickly as possible. However, in this game of cat and mouse, Marks always seems to be a step behind. Instead of being able to identify the culprit and prevent any deaths from occurring, Marks scares the passengers to the point where they start to think he’s crazy. Soon it is Marks who is fighting to protect not just his passengers by his life also.

Now this movie was clever and smartly written. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, Unknown) does a great job of keeping you on the edge of your seat. And while everything plays out perfectly for this movie to gain and hold traction, you do have to suspend your belief. For me, that was okay. The film hooked me and did an excellent job of identifying a dozen or so potential culprits in the first 15 or 20 minutes.

Julianne Moore (Far From Heaven, The End of the Affair) co-stars as the passenger sitting next to Marks and one of two people on the flight (along with the lead flight attendant) he trusts. Or can he? At one point in the movie or another, he seems to think anybody could have a part in the terrorist act. When the finger gets pointed at him, his demons seem to want to exercise themselves too. This movie isn’t an addiction movie, even though Marks finds himself locked in a lavatory staring at a bottle of hard liquor on multiple occasions. I don’t think this was needed at all. Was it used to evoke sympathy from the audience? It wasn’t like Flight, where addiction was the movie’s focus. In my opinion, there was no need for Marks to be an alcoholic. This movie was not a drama. This movie fell into the categories of action, suspense, and mystery; thus, there were a couple of sentimental parts that we didn’t need.

Non-Stop is intense, fun, and will keep you guessing. Ignore that the series of events are illogical and enjoy the ride. I recommend it to all fans of action/adventure or suspense movies.

Plot 8/10
Character Development 8/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 8/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing  8.5/10
Cinematography 8.5/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
83%

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• Passenger 57
• The Commuter
• Red Eye
• Speed
• Under Siege