A poor attempt at thrilling

Rating: 4/10 (10 December 2015)

Liam Neeson has single handily created a new career path for ageing actors to go into action movies. Non-Stop is a kind of action thriller but with a mystery thrown in there too, it can't quite make it's mind up which of the three it truly wants to be though. It all revolves around an air marshal (Neeson) who is on a routine flight from New York to London; the flight soon turns ugly though. The story is basically about a mysterious passenger threatening to kill other passengers unless they get the money they want, if not then someone will go every 20 minutes. Of course Liam Neeson's character isn't going to just take his seat and watch as everyone dies, no he is going to go kind of crazy and try to save everyone but also find out who is behind this sinister plot.
The film for me is a poor one, easy to watch yes but lacks in any decent substance, you certainly can turn your brain off for over 100 minutes though. The movie tries to be smart and that is where it fails, it tries to thrill and also fails and although the quest to finding who is behind the plot is exciting, it never quite is matched by anything else. Liam Neeson goes full on with the action in the style most recently some have become accustomed too, it never goes over the top and that I can respect it for but the plot is no great one. I very much disliked the ending which is so sort of stupid even that it brings this from being a pretty mediocre film to being just plain poor and below-par.
Liam Neeson is actually not bad in his role, he kind of mumbles a lot and isn't given the best lines it has to be said but nevertheless the action scenes he does are well choreographed and done well from Neeson himself too. Julianne Moore makes a random appearance as a fellow passenger and is the person sitting next to Neeson as the plot unfolds so of course she is dragged into the story too. The most random appearances have to go to Michelle Dockery and Lupita Nyong'o who just seem to dawdle an awful lot and really didn't even need to be in the plot; in fact most characters are pointless in this.
Jaume Collet-Serra directs and he doesn't do much to make this good, you know the script isn't half bad in terms of how the story plays out but Collet-Serra doesn't bring the story to life enough and it ends up too dull in certain ways. The thrilling parts of the movie (the thrills that are good that is) are usually scenes that contain the score from John Ottman who does a good job of at least trying to make us pumped up or want to know more about the mystery, the film can never quite grab you enough to really make you interested though so you're left kind of hanging as the ending comes up.
Overall a pretty dire movie actually, it's nowhere near awful of course and I would even recommend it to those who enjoy a good if not basic thrill. Fans of Liam Neeson you may also enjoy this, if I had to recommend one of Neeson's recent travels into action movies this would not be the one I would say although moments of this can show you that Neeson really can fight pretty well on the big screen.