Non-Stop

Liam Neeson arrived late to the action party, already in his mid-fifties when someone snatched his daughter in Taken, and in response he has since snatched up as many action man roles as he possibly can before his shelf-life as a believable ass-kicker inevitably runs out. So between punching wolves (The Grey), punching amnesia (Unknown), punching terrorists (The A-Team), punching Bruce Wayne (Batman Begins), punching Gods (Clash/Wrath Of The Titans) and punching aliens (Battleship), his radar for quality inthe last while has been iffy at best. It would appear that with Non-Stop, someone has taken his quality radar, removed the batteries and dropped it down the toilet.

Neeson plays a troubled, alcoholic air-marshal on a transatlantic flight who starts receiving text messages from an unknown source, who is threatening to murder one passenger every twenty minutes unless $150 million is paid into a specific bank account. Sure enough, passengers do start to get bumped off in a timely fashion, with everyone on board a suspect. Or more specifically, everyone with a famous face a suspect.

Is Julianne Moore, slumming it here for no good reason? Is it that guy from House Of Cards? Or that lady from 12 Years A Slave? Or is it actually Neeson himself?? Nah, that’d be TOO interesting a plot twist for this movie which, despite the vaguely interesting set-up and claustrophobic setting, manages to be about as eventless as an actual transatlantic flight, and feels about as long as one, too.

Neeson himself seems to be sleep-walking through the role, bringing none of the menace or gravitas he provided in Taken or The Grey respectively. The mostly uninspired direction brings nothing new (bar boredom) to the essentially trashy sub-genre of hijacked vehicles, as the plot and dialogue flip wildly back and forth between laughably bad and just plain bad.

Things pick up a little bit for the exciting final 20 minutes, but even that seems faintly ridiculous, with its poor CGI and logic-defying physics. We’re all for turning your brain off for a bit of dumb fun at the movies, but Non-Stop is just too dull to be this unforgivably stupid.