a5c7b9f00b An air marshal springs into action during a transatlantic flight after receiving a series of text messages demanding $150 million into an off-shore account, or someone will die every 20 minutes.
The alcoholic and discredited air marshal Bill Marks is a former cop that still grieves the death of his eight year-old daughter that died of leukemia. Bill is assigned to a flight from New York to London and the passenger Jen Summers sits on his side in the first-class. When the plane is crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Bill receives text messages telling him that one passenger will die every twenty minutes unless the TSA air flight company transfers 150 million dollars to an offshore account. Bill contacts his superior that does not believe in his words. Further they discover that the bank account is in the name of Bill. Now Bill has to find the terrorist with only the support of Jen and the flight attendant Nancy and soon he finds a bomb on board. But the TSA representative believes that Bill is the terrorist. Will he succeed in saving the passengers lives?
A very very different type of movie and the cast played their part in making this one of the more enjoyable films I have seen this year. It wasn't until close to the end that I worked out who the villain was, you may do a bit better. I think this is quite original for "airplane dramas" and the ending very different from others I have seen - I would call this a "must" for all movie buffs, lots of originality in this for me and well worth watching, maybe even more than once
2014, what are you doing to me?! I normally feel like a positive person, but you have given very little to get excited about at the movies. Unfortunately Liam Neeson's latest uber-serious thriller, Non-Stop, is the next in line of bad action movies this year. It's a shame, because I was excited about this one. I love a good airplane nail-biter (Red Eye, United 93, the plane sequence in World War Z), but no one seems to be trying very hard here and it shows. Non-Stop is a soap-opera level suspense film about a troubled air marshal aboard a hijacked plane, in which he is a suspect. As you can see, the guys making this film aren't terribly interested in making a unique movie, but even worse they don't make an intriguing one. Every "twist" is seen from a mile away with the movie becoming abrasively preachy towards the end. The obnoxious style makes it feels like a film student just learned how to use his after-effects computer program. The music is over-bearing, not allowing the story to do any of the emotional weightlifting. If young guys made this movie, then it's forgivable to have these frantic choices; otherwise these decisions just come off as ineffective and pretentious. There is a decent action scene or two here and there, and some of the mystery works, but the cheap thrills rarely pay off emotionally and are too steeped in convolutedness to really work. The only thing "non-stop" here is the tedium. If you must see an action movie in theatres this week, see "Robocop", but skip this.
Non-Stop isn't exactly a smooth ride, but as far it being the big screen equivalent of an airplane novel, one that you read on the flight and throw away when you get to your destination, it is wildly successful. Just don't think too hard about it.