It isn’t often a male actor gets beyond his fiftieth year of age only to quite suddenly find himself a leading action star. Yet this is precisely what happened to actor Liam Neeson following his 2008 starring role in Taken. True, he had appeared in plenty of action films before this, but it was his success in Taken that elevated him into this particular stratospheric level.
His roles since then have varied, some being more successful than others, but clearly Mr. Neeson has his eyes on scripts which feature “Taken“-like roles, including that movie’s sequel. Well, add to that particular list 2014’s Non-Stop, a film that finds Mr. Neeson playing Bill Marks, a burnt out, alcoholic U.S. Marshall assigned to flight duty who suddenly finds himself in the middle of all kinds of danger…all while traveling *ahem* non-stop from New York to London.
So, was the movie *ahem part deux* worth the ride?
Yes. And no.
If you don’t have anything better to do and can put your brain in neutral while seeing Mr. Neeson in a leading action role…you should enjoy Non-Stop. However, you have a low tolerance for a story that features waaaaay too many coincidences for it to work, then you may want to stay away.
The story goes as follows: We’re introduced to Mr. Neeson’s Bill Marks and an assortment of potential “suspects” in what is about to follow (very Agatha Christie of them). Once the airplane he’s on departs, Marks receives text messages from someone claiming to be on board the plane. That person tells Marks he will kill a passenger ever twenty minutes until $150 Million is wired to their account.
Naturally, Marks shows the messages to the crew, pilots, and a second Marshall (a backup who’s seated in the business class) but the various individual’s levels of concern vary. Because of the route taken and the timing of the first message, the pilot informs Marks their first landing site is in Iceland and at least an hour away.
To say more would give away plot points, but suffice it to say that doubts start creeping into both the crew and the passengers as to Marks’ mental state. Again, those coincidences I mentioned before play a role in some of what’s to come and soon people are wondering if there even is a hijacker…or if Marks is behind everything.
It gets awfully silly at times but on the plus side you have Mr. Nesson at the center of it all giving another pretty good performance. Not his greatest (check out the way he delivers the movie’s final line to actress Julianne Moore. He looked like he was having a hard time keeping a straight face at that point!), but not bad.
Anyway, there are far worse films out there, but the bottom line is that Non-Stop is yet another case of a movie that might have benefited tremendously from a little more work to its script.