Honest about what it is

Rating: 8/10 (3 April 2016)

Non-Stop set its sights on being a mid-air heavy action whodunit and sets forth to stealthily achieve that goal. Sometimes its possible to smell "producer cold feet" syndrome, where stock action-flick action gets hyperbolic toward the end--and you can tell that the producers are panicking and pulling rank over the director. Non-Stop doesn't suffer from this: It's designed, from the ground up, to be a steady IV drip of incrementally escalating dramatic tension, built around a simple, operatic concept: Someone, for some reason, wants to endanger everyone on a transatlantic flight.
Like I said, it's operatic and simple, albeit with flurries of complication arising largely from the mystery: What are the motives and means involved?
The usual barrier is encountered: The viewer disbelief over the unlikelihood of the byzantinely complex scenario can be suspended IFF the mythos is compelling enough.
Is it? Mmmmmm...maybe. Oddly, the ultimate revelation of the motive is a key point in the flick, and it'd be spoiling to reveal it, here. Not giving anything away, it's a guy at the frazzled end of his psychological rope, seeking to make a large social point.
Another aspect of the mythos is time-honored (read: OLD): It's what Paddy Chayefsky characterized in Network (1975) as the "crusty-but- benign" public servant character.
I give this flick as high a score as I do because it's honest about its intentions and amazingly fleshes in those intentions with very good production values and pacing. Non-Stop is not normally my cup o' tea, but I found it nonetheless compelling, in a parameterized sort of way.
The tension follows the eldritch narrative trajectory; exponentially rising tension to a vertiginous height, a brief chain of intense crisis moments, release, a coda of calmness and connection.
From time to time, I chime in on IMDb User Comments to tell readers to avoid certain movies, and I try (and don't always succeed) in telling folks why. The usual reason to avoid a flick is artlessness. Strange to say for a made-to-spec action flick, but Non-Stop is amazingly artful. I would definitely recommend it to budding screenwriters.