“Non-Stop”

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some language, sensuality and drug references

“Non-Stop” is like cinnamon toast: simple ingredients, easy to make, tastes the same (more or less) regardless of depth of skill but, nevertheless, handy and dependable when craving and convenience demands it.  

Liam Neeson plays Bill Marks, a troubled alcoholic air marshal (that makes you all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it?), who is on a plane from New York to London. People are dying every 20 minutes unless $150 million is transferred into his very own bank account. (Cue the paranoia.)

Like I said, “Non-Stop” has basic, common, cinematic ingredients, hardly an original variation at all. There is a cute little girl with a Paddington Bear. There are several suspicious looking characters in the movie, many deserving a smash in the face which, Mr. Neeson as Marshal Marks provides. 

Air turbulence provides some fun visuals and Liam Neeson is always fun to watch, even though he, once again, is playing a guy who is a good guy with very bad habits who loves his daughter but has had more than his fair share of bad shakes and is forced to kill several people who deserve to be killed.

The bad guys in this movie are very, very fuzzy indeed.  I think the screenwriters, experiencing a banger of a hangover, cobbled them together on an iPad while in a taxi on the way to the story conference. These are no James Bond villain types, oh, no, not at all. I think they should have simply used a stick man drawn with a black crayon on cardboard (the kind you get from the dry cleaners when your dress shirts are folded) dangled from a bamboo fishing pole. It would have been just as effective.

That is not to say, “Non-Stop” was boring or a terrible waste of time. I had fun watching it. And my side-car film critic opined, “It isn’t so bad, I kind of like it” which is, for her, a standard approval rating. It is a popcorn thriller/action film that will be forgotten

There are other things I could say about it but that might ruin it should you go see it. Suffice it to say many of the obvious suspects turn out to be innocent. So there are some “gottcha” moments but none are worthy of shock and awe. In fact, in hindsight, the inevitability of the end is so terribly obvious and time-worn one can’t help but wonder if it is a cross between one of the 1970s disaster movies and an episode of the Love Boat.

I am being perhaps a tad unfair. This is a poor man’s Taken (also a Liam Neeson product). Perhaps this is a rehearsal for Taken 3. By the by, Liam plays nearly the very same type role but as Bryan Mills, not Bill Marks. Hmmmm. Initials very the same. Are we being punked?

Brainless and predictable, it may be but it is throwaway entertainment and what is really wrong with that? It is an action film and nearly every clever twist has been used but it is almost refreshing that a film of this nature is made without any effort given to be clever or original. It is, after all, just cinnamon toast. When one is hungry and lazy and the cupboards are bare … well, then, what is the harm?

“Non-Stop” earns two and a half bow ties out of five.