Monday, March 3, 2014

Non Stop - Review

Non Stop – Review

It is possible for a film to be riveting, entertaining and utterly preposterous? The answer is absolutely yes and it manifested itself in Liam Neeson’s recent continuous string of Jason Bourne stylized films for the soon to be filing for both social security and medicade viewing audience (which I would guess include me as well) in the film “Non Stop”.

In Neeson’s latest effort he plays a US Ari Marshall named Bill Marks. He is visually defined very early on in the film as a somewhat weary, somewhat depressed, chain smoking and alcoholic drinking on the job public servant who approaches his work almost on auto pilot, pardon the pun. He doesn’t particularly like being around people, but again in order to be air Marshall it comes along with the job.

Early on while in mid flight across the Atlantic Bill receives a text message on his supposedly secured line that someone is going to die every 20 minutes on the plane until $150 million is paid as ransom. And with precision clock work someone does die as threatened and it happens again and again and again.

Now the manner these passengers die I must admit as a subplot had an interesting twist that was a bit clever and suspenseful initially, but only for a brief period of time. “Non Stop” eventually starts to spiral downward a bit with the redundancy of this plot point and too much formulaic directing of the camera panning to literally every single passenger as to give the audience visual cues as everyone on board having a legitimate motive as the secretive culprit to this cat and mouse five mile high caper.

“Non Stop” has a few good moments, but it gets bogged down with what feels like the director’s attempt to running out the clock of the 1:47 minute running time. Seemingly trying to legitimize every conceivable who done it on the plane and in the end divulging an utterly preposterous motive for a weak and needlessly over intricate story.

In the end, what holds this by the book film together is the charismatic appeal, magnetism and strength of Neeson’s acting prowess, which he provides just enough to carry the film across the finish line, but just barely.

3 Stars

2 comments:

  1. As enjoyable as this was, it certainly didn't deserve a trip tot the cinema. I pretty much agree with you that Neeson held this movie together. Great review!

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