NON STOP

SYNOPSIS –An Air Marshal finds himself being manipulated and threatened by one of the passengers on his plane. If you want to put your characters in a closed-off space which will breed tension and distrust then you can’t do much better than an airplane. This is where Air Marshal Bill Marks (Liam Nesson) finds himself after being informed by text that a passenger will die every 20 minutes unless demands are met. This is an effective set up and, for the most part, the film makes good use of it. It should bluntly be stated that one of the main points the film has in its corner is Neeson himself. His character might be the usual suspect when it comes to this kind of film (i.e. a drunk, washed up) but Neeson is able to play these roles with enough sincerity to make the audience still buy into it. Other actors in this position might have been tempted to sleepwalk through a role that’s not exactly the most original in the history of cinema. The other area the film works best at is in building tension - the use of text messages to communicate keeps the perpetrator as a malevolent, faceless entity. The ‘ding’ of the text alert actually becoming sinister as it heralds new malicious instructions. The identity of the perpetrator is also a good twist, not iron clad that you will never spot this, but still quite good. The real problem comes in the third act, it’s almost as though having built up all this tension they can’t quite seem to figure out what to do with it. So we fall back on the same action movie clichés (complete with requisite one liner) that lets the film down. When the time comes to reveal the big master plan and the reason behind, the reason is a bit flat and not particularly original. FINAL VERDICT 6/10 it’s a good setup but lets itself down in the last act.