Non-Stop

Rating: 7/10 (26 November 2015)

An alcoholic, disgraced NYC cop divorcée, Bill Marks (Liam Neeson), who lost his daughter to cancer has been an US Marshall on board planes serving as a protector, but his job will get a bit complicated: a terrorist is on board and using text messages (there's this savvy use of on screen text, a visual that ably communicates to us what he reads on his phone and responds in kind) to indicate a death-every-twenty-minutes threat which further makes matters worse when he's implicated as the one responsible for holding a plane full of passengers hostage in the sky! He will need to find out who is sending him messages and poisoning people (the head pilot dies as does a passenger first believed to be the terrorist), as well as, find and dispose of a bomb found in his fellow Marshall's case (Anson Mount; trafficking cocaine, engaging Neeson in hand-to-hand combat within a restroom in a memorable sequence), with protecting everyone on board a top priority becoming increasingly difficult. With tensions among the passenger manifest growing, impatient with his efforts to search out a terrorist, using physical methods when necessary (his "roughing around certain passengers" routine does not ingratiate himself to those on the plane at all), and his own law enforcement on the ground believing he has become a loose cannon needing money wired to a trust account (this whole elaborate set up thanks to quite a brilliant mastermind), with a media now condemning him as guilty, Marks has mounting obstacles uprising against him. Can he weed out the real culprit?
Preposterous plot (really, the eventual unmasking of the ones responsible for this whole affair and the reasoning behind why is just a doozy) and implausible conclusion involving altitude, a bomb going off, and a heroic landing, ask a lot of us, that's for sure. If Neeson wasn't in charge of this, as if a sheriff in charge of Tombstone, then Non Stop would be a hard pill to swallow. But, dammit, if he doesn't hold this together through star power alone! Julianne Moore gets the equivalent of a paycheck part as a passenger sitting next to him, becoming one of a few that totally trusts him. She is just fine, given a bit of a back-story involving a heart condition and secretive about her past, because Moore's a pro, but this kind of film is really beneath her caliber of talent at this point in her career. Neeson, however, has become an amazing model for a geriatric hero, once occupied by the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, so good at this action hero gig he defies age and is believable in the parts assigned him. How Neeson is able to continue to do this and not become a joke is a testament to his charisma and on screen prowess. He is the whole show, here, doggedly in charge of rooting out the bad guy(s) and rescuing the innocent, doing whatever it takes to save the day. At the end of the day, no matter the plot developments and complexities that are simply too unbelievable to accept rationally, it comes down to the hero before you and whether or not he is compelling enough to dedicate your time to. Neeson is such an actor.
Going back to Moore, I do think she has good chemistry with Neeson who starts to rely on her and a stewardess he has grown to trust during his time as a US Marshall while on the plane. The discovery of how the pilot died, as an example, due to a hole in a restroom he goes to smoke a cig on occasion shows you how the film goes through its grab bag to help the hero solve his case. The film's pace, busy plot, and active hero keeps things rolling, hoping we don't try and stop to think about it. Corey Stoll of Ant-Man is a NYC cop, Scoot McNairy a school teacher, and Michelle McDockery a trustworthy stewardess with important parts in the film among an extensive supporting cast.