Red Herring on a Plane

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2014)

Hack director Jaume Collet-Serra's red herring film about a mystery passenger on a commercial flight who wants money or he/she is going to kill someone every 20 minutes and only a drunkard air marshal played by Neeson can save everyone on board. Everything you need to know about Neeson's barely one dimensional character is in the first scene of the movie. He stares despondently at a bottle of whiskey, so the man's an alcoholic. He stares into further despondency at a picture of a little girl, obviously his daughter - who's obviously a link to why he's staring into that bottle of whiskey. Top notch writing. This is also one of those films that writes itself into a corner. Every character could be or couldn't be the maniac pulling the strings and the resolution comes at no surprise, because it literally could be anyone. They could have filmed thirty different endings - each ending changing the villain and personal motivation and the preceding events wouldn't have to change a single frame and the outcome would be exactly the same. Neeson gets worked up and huffy and puffy and punches a few people, but other than that, barely anything of interest happens.