Plothole extravaganza

Rating: 4/10 (12 February 2015)

Liam Neeson almost carries this one through.
Air Marshal Bill Marks has to deal with a deranged killer, who is knocking off passengers and pilots with a poison dart every 20 minutes. It becomes increasingly clear that the bad guy is not after the ransom, to be deposited in an account in Marks' name. He wants to avenge his father's death on 9/11, which he blames on the incompetence of the US government, and specifically then-NYPD fireman Marks. The film does a good job at keeping you guessing who the bad guy might be, and even the pretty explicit plot summary I just gave may still leave you surprised. Julianne Moore and Michelle Dockery provide strong support, and if you love that actor combo, you may forgive the film its shortcomings.
Those shortcomings are the Non-Stop plot holes. Now, I'm not one to search for accuracy or total consistency in action flicks. Let's face it, if things are moving fast enough, we can overlook the holes. But when the holes get big enough that you start thinking about them while watching, the script has failed. There is a trade-off between zipping along fast enough so you can't think about the holes, or zipping along slower but with greater consistency. Think "Olympus Has Fallen" at one end of that spectrum, and "North By Northwest" at the other end of that spectrum.
I'm not talking about small holes, like a bomb that can't be thrown off the plane because a low pressure switch will set it off, but then when someone shoots out a window in the plane a minute later and the pressure drops, the bomb does not go off. The bomb went off a minute later anyway, no big deal for the plot.
I'm talking about why US Air Marshals would hire a drunk with publicly known problems that are broadcast live to passengers on those little back-of-the-seat monitors. An Air Marshal supervisor who furiously refuses to listen to his employee trying to explain that if he were to hijack a plane, he would not put the ransom account in his own name! A non-suicidal helper of the suicidal bad guy who goes along with a plan to collect the ransom after parachuting off an exploding passenger airliner (he deserves the $150 million for stupid ballsiness). Or a pilot who needs to drop to 8000 ft to avoid an explosion, but never tells the escorting jet pilots ready to down the plane why he needs to drop altitude. And so on and so forth. These holes are both obvious and plot-critical, and for me they ruined the whole thing even as I was watching it.
The movie also dishes up the stock characters and politically correct anti-stereotypes, like the Islamic MD complete with Taqiyah who is suspected by all yet innocent, versus the white 9/11 victim nice guy who turns out to be a terrorist. Sure, the US has its Timothy McVeighs, but I still say: Yawn!
So a 5/10 it is, for solid acting that almost rescues this Neeson action vehicle, and for keeping me guessing who the real bad guy is. The film only partly satisfies in a single viewing.