Non-Stop

The opening scene of Non-Stop pretty much tells us everything we need to know about its hero, Bill Marks (Liam Neeson).  He's sitting alone in his car, looking sadly at the rain hitting against the windshield, which tells us he's depressed.  He glances over at a photo of a little girl he has mounted on his dashboard, which tells us he's obviously lost a child, and it still haunts him.  After staring at the photo for a few seconds, he takes out a liquor bottle and pours it into his coffee cup, telling us that he's battling personal demons.  It's a brilliant little example of exposition, telling us everything we need to know about the character in the opening 30 seconds or so of the film.  It also gets us in the mood for a quiet and personal little drama or thriller.

The movie that follows betrays those expectations.  While it's far from bad, I had a hard time buying a single second of it, and never felt drawn in enough so I could ignore the silliness on display and just enjoy it for what it is.  It's been made with care, and has some reliable actors giving game performances in supporting roles, even if the script is giving them little to do.  Non-Stop is efficient for what it is, but it never quite hit that right level of tension and drama that would draw me in.  It's also a movie that unfortunately gets sillier as it goes on, making it harder to take seriously.  By the time the climax rolls around, the screenplay is throwing heavy-handed cliches left and right, including an out of the blue political message, a killer who loves to just stand there and spell out their ultimate plan, giving the hero ample time to turn the tables, and a child who exists simply so they can be placed in peril.

But before all that happens and the movie derails, we're interested as Bill Marks, a Federal Air Marshal, boards a flight from New York to London.  He takes his seat on the plane next to a chatty and friendly woman named Jen (Julianne Moore), and prepares for what should be an uneventful six hours up in the air.  His personal demons are still hounding him during the flight, so he sneaks into the bathroom, disables the smoke detector with a strip of tape, and helps himself to a cigarette to calm his nerves.  As soon as he exits the bathroom, his nerves get rattled all over again when he receives a text message from someone on the plane who not only knows who Bill is and his troubled background, but also threatens to kill a passenger every 20 minutes unless $150 million is wired to a private account.  Should the threat be taken seriously?  He lets only a select few people on board know, so as not to cause a panic.  No one is sure what to do.  That's when certain people on the flight start turning up dead, and Bill knows he's being personally challenged by someone on the plane.

With the help of the previously mentioned Jen, and a flight attendant named Nancy (Michelle Dockery), Bill tries to sniff out the person responsible without drawing attention.  But then, some troubling news arrives - The private account that the money is supposed to be wired to is in Bill's name.  This is not a spoiler, as the trailers and ad campaign have already revealed this information.  Besides, the movie has to throw suspicion upon its main character somehow.  This is one of those movies where everybody is suspicious in some way, shape or form, playing on the fact that the killer could literally be anyone on board.  However, the characters are too thinly written to be good suspects.  Most of the passengers are one-note characters (the angry and rude black guy, the tough guy New York cop who wants to take control of the situation, the kind medical doctor, the scared little girl who's never been flying before), and while the actors playing them are fine, they never really get to stand out.

At the middle of it all is Liam Neeson, who at 61, seems to be having the time of his life with this reinvention of himself as an action hero ever since 2008's Taken.  He commands the screen and does his best to hold our attention, even when the plot is flying off the rails.  He does a commendable job, and I'm glad he was in the movie, as he's the only actor who actually does get to make some sort of impression.  Julianne Moore comes close at times.  I liked her character, and I kept on waiting for the movie to develop her further, but aside from an effective scene where she gets to explain her personal view of the world and why she doesn't want to waste a single day, she never gets to stand out as much as she should.  Finally, it's almost criminal how this movie wastes the talented Lupita Nyong'o (an Oscar nominee for 12 Years a Slave) in a nothing role as a flight attendant, where she has maybe five lines of dialogue in the entire film, and spends most of her time standing in the background.  I have a feeling that after this Sunday, you won't be seeing her in roles like this for very long.

I think Non-Stop has all the right elements to be a successful thriller, it just needed to strengthen them in order for the movie to work.  The characters and supporting passengers and flight crew needed to be fleshed out more in order for us to get involved in the "anyone can be a suspect" plot.  The way it's written, when the true identity of the villain is revealed, it's almost an anticlimax.  Heck, were it not for the well-executed, but increasingly ludicrous climax that follows, the ending may have been a total wash out.

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