Not nearly as good a movie as it should have been

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2014)

Some alcoholic guy named Bill who seems to be a wreck boards a plane. All sorts of suspicious people are on board and strange things happen. Turns out he's the air marshal. He's got a seat up in business class. Some lady insist she's got to sit at a window seat next to him. As soon as they take off, he gets text messages on the "federal network" demanding millions or else someone will die every 20 minutes. One of the suspicious passengers turns out to be another air marshal in coach. Bill confronts this other guy, a scuffle ensues and he kills him. Thus Bill made the warning come true all by himself. Bill is friends with the crew. He calls some federal agency but they inform him that the account number of the terrorist is under his name! That makes the government and the pilots think that Bill is the hijacker. Next the pilot dies mysteriously behind closed doors. Next another passenger starts foaming out of the mouth. Among the passengers is a NYPD, he starts getting frustrated and wants to take out Bill together with other guys. They end up fighting. Now a bomb appears on board and everyone settles down and tries to work together. Bill tries to start the bomb protocol but now fighter jets are escorting the plane and will shoot it down if it doesn't follow orders. Finally it's revealed who the villains are and we learn of their motivation for it all that comes out of nowhere but is actually pretty good.
If it weren't for all the A-listers in this movie, it would barely pass as an one of those Asylum movies based on an A movie. Asylum would probably have done a better job than this crew. For a script with 3 writers it's incomprehensible that they left so many gaping plot holes all over. Off course there's no shortage of lack of realism either. Direction is weak as well, despite the claims by all the actors in the behind the scenes feature claiming that the director, whoever he is, is so brilliant. Neeson's performance isn't convincing either at times when he's supposed to be all energized and taking charge. The script clearly had potential. It should have made for a very exciting movie. But despite the large budget, and Silver being the producer, they couldn't make this movie work unfortunately. Neeson isn't the right guy for the job. It shouldn't have take a whole lot of effort to fix what was wrong with the script and film this movie in a more dynamic and exciting way.