A watchable two star action flick with one of the stupidest plots in recent memory

Rating: 4/10 (22 August 2014)

Liam Neeson, playing a haunted Air Marshall, starts receiving texts saying someone will be killed every 20 minutes until he transfers several hundred million dollars to an off shore account. In a very bad-ass manner, he tries to uncover the murderer and save the plane. Count me in! Liam Neeson is a great actor and manages to make being understated cool, while the premise, although preposterous, is claustrophobic and thrilling. As well as loving action films I also love mysteries so this was one of my most anticipated films of the year. And one of the most disappointing. If you saw this, do you actually remember any of it? Like, anything at all? I barely remember it and I only saw it a few months ago. A little worrying. Although this is a 2 star movie, it's not something I totally hated watching and I moderately enjoyed in some ways. Liam Neeson owns the film and brings grit and a tiny bit of emotion to a silly story. Lupita Nyong'o and Julianne Moore are both underused, but still good. It does have plenty of exciting moments, the direction is competent and it's an action film emphasizing tension over mindless thrills for once.
So, it's a watchable movie and moderately exciting. But no enough. The film is style over substance but there's nothing wrong with that. But it can't decide on murder mystery or action thriller. It veers between the 2 in a very irritating manner. Although there are thrills, a lot of the time they don't go far enough and as the film goes on and it switches to brutal beat em up mode, it loses the sense of tension and claustrophobia it had at first. The primary thing that lets it down is the screenplay. This has a plot so stupid it's makes Snakes On A Plane look like a documentary. OK, so blockbusters are about suspension of disbelief but this takes action movie ridiculousness to a whole new level. But not in a good way like Fast & Furious. The plot doesn't make any kind of sense, and the plan of the main villain would have been impossible to pull off. This is total and utter rubbish in terms of storytelling and it is possible to pull off a plane set action film, but this would have worked better on a train. A ludicrous, although not totally unforgivable disappointment. Silly.
4/10