Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (12 June 2014)

The last true action hero, the towering elderly Liam Neeson returns to his recently found career path of on-screen macho in this hi-flying adrenaline rush. Neeson plays Bill Marks, an alcoholic ex-cop with family issues (doesn't he always?), who now works as one of the thousands of air marshals, hired in the aftermath of post-9/11 frenzy. Often unverified and with little to no background checks, various non- suitable personnel is let on-board aeroplanes (at least such is the premise of the movie) with an armed gun. Soon after start off Marks starts receiving enigmatic text messages claiming that sooner than later people will start dying on the aeroplane, unless funds are transferred to a given account. As Marks attempts to hunt down the perpetrator the body count starts to increase and soon doubts arise as to who the real culprit is...
Initially promising, especially given Neeson makes for the ideal off- beat antihero, the story shifts into a whodunit scenario, with paranoia rife as to the people responsible. As such the movie however lacks originality and seems like a laboured rip-off of "The Flight Plan", which at least managed to keep tension high and had the audience guessing as to the insanity of the main character. Here the tension is much less palpable, albeit the payoff is way less ridiculous, although still with a significant dosage of ludicrousness. Action sequences are nonetheless top-notch and watching Neeson (once again) combat in closed quarters never gets old. Looking past that the story never really seems mysterious, the identity of the culprits is never really feasible and its pretty easy to identify non-guilty parties, even if at one point in time the finger gets pointed at them. By the end the movie swerves into the realm of laughable resolution, not only with the appalling motivation of the baddies (so bad the actors had trouble with even phoning it in). On top of that we find layered mad-hatter plotting of the evil dudes and all sort of air flight procedures being thrown about in gibberish rants, but the characters seem all to happy to omit the real options at their disposal (such as armed fighters not allowing a plane to lower altitude despite the real threat of a bomb on board).
As good as Liam Neeson is, the story does syphon your intellect, leaving me ultimately disinterested. Obviously not as far fetched in idiocy as "The Flight Plan" or the cult favorite "Snakes on a Plane", but just enough on the wrong side of logic to derail an otherwise well paced high-altitude thriller.