Where's the singing nun?

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2014)

There have been good and bad airplane movies, with CON AIR probably the best and some of the AIRPORT series among the worst. NON-STOP is somewhere in the middle, a bit up or a bit down according to your taste.
Air marshal Liam Neeson's bosses think he's gone rogue and is hijacking the flight. While Liam is trying to figure out which of the passengers and crew can be trusted, the passengers are quickly losing faith in him.
This is hokum, of course, but it's classy hokum, with Julianne Moore as the passenger sat next to Neeson and Downton Abbey's Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) as the chief stewardess. (In the early days of British Airways, some air-hostesses were Honourables - and even honourable!). A few corny elements - Neeson's grieving alcoholic back-story, Moore's mystery-woman, a cute little girl travelling alone - but mercifully no singing nun.
The story has credibility-stretching twists, but the last half-hour is seriously nerve-shredding with special effects bringing to vivid reality every passenger's worst nightmare. Reviewing the original AIRPORT (1970), the great film critic Alexander Walker wrote: "For sheer contentment there is nothing to beat the sight of constant catastrophe happening to others." He was right!