Review of Non-Stop (2014) by Lasttimeisaw — 18 Mar 2014

My first cinema-going in Cairo in a rather mini-screen room downtown, my big-screen attendance needs to be revived, but in this arid season, the only credible choice (for me at least) is this Liam Neeson’s action flick, very pertinent to the current mystifying tragedy of Malaysian airline’s missing Boeing 777-200ER, and not the least because my goddess Moore is in it too, returns the favour to Neeson as a red-herring-and-the-possible-love-interest in it after their largely overlooked collaboration in Atom Egoyan’s erotic thriller CHLOE (2009, 7/10), oops, spoilers alert!

The premise is smart and efficient enough to pique audience’s interest in this airplane-bound whodunit hijacking, Bill Marks (Neeson), an air marshal with alcoholic problem and a heart-rending past, tries to expose the mastermind who extorts $150 million to an account abroad by claiming to kill one fuselage-confined passenger (or crew member) every 20 minutes inside a transatlantic vehicle. What is more insidious, the plot is divulged to frame Marks as the fall guy, and with some inexplicable twists and three body counts, it almost works.

But no one should pick on Liam Neeson, overtly the most bankable action star over-60 presently (TAKEN 2008, 7/10; THE GREY 2011, 7/10; TAKEN 2 2012, 5/10), take that Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis! Reunited with Jaume Collet-Serra, the director of UNKNOWN (2011), he is forlorn and desperate to outstrip his unidentified enemy, but he will catch the culprit under any circumstances. So we all embark on the shot in the dark with Bill, deducing by appearance, physiognomy, utterance and of course, ethnics, but the film firmly sticks to the political correctness. The message communication between Marks and the unknown terrorist who hacks the specialised network inside the aircraft plays a major part in conveying information essential to audience’s own judgement and slickly props up the storytelling along the riddle until a time-bomb is uncovered. Then one negligent boo-boo will betray who is the extorter.

It is a challenging task to round up such an original scheme and offer a satisfactory explanation, so the finishing-up process is cursorily executed (especially the motive and the preposterous set pieces involving several key characters’ conduct), it is understandable but the thirsty of a plausible closure has never been properly quenched, maybe they are working on a sequel due to its rosy box office achievements, hope Moore’s role can be excavated (from the huge scar on her chest) much deeper since she could be the big boss behind all the catastrophe.

Neeson is formidable and vulnerable alternately, he certainly enjoys the exploitation of the typecast lone-hero fashion, but one does hope he can return to his character-actor realm during the breaks, he is much overdue for some serious recognition besides these cash consolation after the ski tragedy killed his wife Natasha Richardson. The rest of the cast is borderline passable, glad to see Dockery manage to grab a decent role on big screen out of her DOWNTON ABBEY property. But Nyong’o doesn’t need this on her filmography at all, I will not spoil too much, nevertheless a big relief for me is that she survives instead of being written off hastily with her Grace Jones hairstyling.