The usual suspects

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2014)

This is one of those things, tolerable to watch because it moves fast, mind-numbing to think about, but the trick here is that you either make it taut enough so that we don't mind, or so ridiculous that minding makes you feel like a sourpuss. Con Air.
The main idea is promising; an air marshal gets mysterious texts by someone on board the flight who demands money wired to an account or passengers start dying. They bangle this, because they try to shoehorn the idea that our guy may be the hijacker, and a loud subtext about absolute authority in the skies that has gone haywire and may be itself to blame, so they have the protagonist act like an out-of-control fool who can think of no subtler way of searching passengers than to have the whole cabin put their hands up!
This isn't a complaint about realism, no one has time for that. Someone might do that, another not. It's about the potential way you'd like to see something unfold. I miss here an atmosphere of glances, strangers, peering among the sleepy passengers and having to remain inconspicuous as you swish back and forth in the cabin; then we could get to the pistol- whipping.
Not a good film, but tolerable.