Film Review: “Non-Stop”

Although it fits quite obviously into that broad, vague
category of the cinematic thriller, the new movie “Non-Stop” actually contains
an unusual combination of elements. It takes place almost entirely inside an
airplane flying across the Atlantic from New York to London, establishing a
setting and situation naturally fraught with a certain tension, even before the
action reveals the presence of a killer and a bomb on board. That tightly
controlled enclosure provides other threads of action and meaning that
demonstrate additional possibilities in a location perhaps all too familiar in
both film and life.

Liam Neeson plays Bill Marks, an
ex-cop, now a federal air marshal assigned to the flight, along with a
colleague, Jack Hammond (Anson Mount), apparently a routine pairing of the two.
Marks starts his assignment with a shot of booze in
his coffee, providing the first hint of an alcoholism that influences much of
the ensuing action. On board he confesses his dislike of flying, an odd problem
considering his profession, to his seatmate, Jen Summers (Julianne Moore), who
helps him through the takeoff, initiating a relationship that develops in
several unexpected directions throughout the flight.

The film’s central problem arises when Marks receives a text
message on his supposedly secure phone, informing him that someone on the
flight will die in 20 minutes, and others 20 minutes after that, a promise that
the sender fulfills right on schedule. 
The sender, who texts Marks throughout the film, demands $150 million to
be placed in a special account, threatening more killings if he doesn’t get the
money. When Marks communicates the threat to his supervisor in Washington, the
boss, like so many of his ilk, refuses to support the agent, and then later
betrays him.

As the tension progresses and the killer continues
to carry out his threats, Marks’s quest for his antagonist grows increasingly
desperate. Frantic and puzzled, he begins to suspect everybody, from the flight
attendants to the co-pilot, implying a paranoia that perfectly suits both the
situation in the airplane and his own personal history, involving a tragedy in
his past. On their seat televisions the passengers see the news stories about
their plight, all of which, thanks to his supervisor, accuse Marks of hijacking
the plane.

With all its shocks and twists, its ingenious notion of a
pursuit within the claustrophobic confines of an airplane and the necessarily
heightened emotion of danger at 35,000 feet and 500 miles an hour, the movie
sustains a terrific level of tension. Once it establishes the basic situation,
it never allows the suspense to diminish, then complicates it with several back
stories and the reactions of various passengers.

Aside from the frequent episodes of quite brutal violence,
when Marks struggles with several different passengers who question his
authority and his methods, the film actually resembles a classic detective
story. Its enclosed, isolated setting resembles those snowbound hotels or grand
country houses where a clever sleuth searches for a murderer among a limited
cast of suspects; in fact, both Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr wrote
novels about a murder on an airplane. Like any fictional detective, in
“Non-Stop” Bill Marks sorts through a number of possible culprits, deals with
false clues, follows red herrings, and ultimately solves a couple of murders
through the same cerebral methods as the investigators of those novels, a HerculePoirot or Henry Merrivale. He even discovers that the murderer employs the
same modus operandi as the villains in those classic novels.

Following Neeson’s starring roles
in the two very successful “Taken” movies (apparently another is in the works),
the media commentators suggest he is now another action hero, lumping him in
the same category as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, or Vin
Diesel. As a number of his performances suggest, however, Neeson
possesses a great deal more versatility and depth than that crew of muscular
mesomorphs. A big man with a powerful screen presence, he recalls a great star
like Burt Lancaster, a strong man with a strong man’s gentleness, a strong
man’s dignity, even a strong man’s vulnerability. His craggy features are marked
by pain and confusion, his strength tempered by a measure of melancholy. 

This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2014.