Non-Stop Review: Suspense at 40,000ft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBxOUube6O4

Non-stop stars Liam Neeson who plays a disheartened Air Marshal. Aboard what seemed to be another basic overseas trip, Bill Marks (Liam) receives a text on a secure network informing him that someone aboard the plane will be killed every 20 minutes unless 1 millions dollars is transferred to their account. After time passes, it turns out that the account is in Bill’s name and that whomever is behind this threat is trying to frame him.

It’s an interesting story for sure and has moments where the movie is suspenseful and intriguing. It also has Liam Neeson going all action-star aboard an aircraft, which I must say is pretty darn cool too. But no matter how cool the movie seems, it’s one of those movies where all the best clips are seen in the trailer. It’s not a bad movie as it is an interesting storyline, like I said, but it’s far from perfect and feels very rushed at the end.

I realize that it’s an action movie and that it’s important to keep it moving along as quick as possible, but aviation guys will scream at some of the elements in the film that are not quite accurate. Heck, most people won’t really care for the end either. There’s a bomb on the plane and it’s important to take the plane down to 8,000 feet before it explodes. That’s fine, do it. However, the plane is being led by military aircraft that are telling him not to go below the current altitude of 30,000 feet, but the pilot decides to trust Marks and descends to 8,000 feet right as the bomb explodes. The explosion still ends up doing massive damage to the plane and the pilot starts losing control, but thankfully the runway is right there. Yay! Wait, what?

First of all, if that’s the runway they were supposed to land on, then they should have been descending LONG before that. In fact, they probably should have been even lower in altitude by that point. So either they rushed this along or hoped no one would care, or as the bomb exploded and they lost altitude, there just happened to be a runway there. Either way, it’s rather odd and poorly executed. Plus, if that indeed was the right runway, where the heck are all the police once they landed? I mean, this was announced over the news as a hijacked plane, so I would expect some type of police force to be on the spot and responding. That wasn’t the case though.

I just thought the ending was extremely poor to what was a fairly intriguing movie up until that point. Liam Neeson is still kick-ass and has his moment of glory, and there are plenty of good fight scenes in the movie too, but that ending just sucked!

Special features on the Blu-ray are also a major disappointment as there are only two features that maybe combine to a total of 10 minutes. Maybe.

Grade: C