Runtime: 1 hours, 47 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Quick Impressions:
I’ve actually been looking forward to Non-Stop, which is odd since I’m not a huge fan of action movies and (though I like Liam Neeson) I haven’t seen either of the Taken movies or The Grey.
The preview for this was so compelling, though. Liam Neeson is a tormented air marshal trying to save a plane he’s accused of hijacking. Julianne Moore (who appears in every other frame of the trailer) is the only person who believes him. (That checks out, too. In cinematic terms, Julianne Moore believing you is kind of like your mom thinking you’re cool. I’ve always liked Moore, but her screen persona exudes this sense of, “Well, I believe you, and I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks because I’m Julianne Moore. Obviously ‘society’ feels one way, but whatever, I’m Julianne Moore, so here, have a drink. Let’s do this.”) Also Lupita Nyong’o is in the movie, but it’s pretty clear as you watch the preview that she’s only featured in the theatrical trailer because Non-Stop was released after her Oscar nomination for Twelve Years a Slave. (Seriously, the way the preview’s put together practically screams, “And if you like seeing Oscar nominees lurking in the background…”)
Non-Stop delivers exactly what its preview promises, and it’s certainly found an audience. (We saw it in a packed house on a Tuesday night.)
With its top-notch cast and beyond ridiculous premise, Non-Stop struck me as a fun, light-hearted choice for movie night.
Somehow I managed to forget the pesky details that my husband has a fear of flying and leaves for a business trip to Bangalore next week. Surely his non-stop flight to London will work out much better than the one in the movie, though! (Right? Right????) Well, anyway, Non-Stop certainly had him on the edge of his seat!
The Good:
Surely most people who buy tickets to Non-Stop do so because they know that Liam Neeson has a very particular set of skills. (See? You don’t even have to watch the Taken movies to know that. Everyone knows that!)
When you buy a ticket to a movie like this, you should know exactly what to expect. And you get that. As usual, the preview gives away far too much information, but at least it doesn’t spoil the ending.
Probably what the movie does best is build tension and toss out red herrings galore. Who is the person responsible for all this nefarious mayhem? We really don’t know. The movie constantly keeps us guessing by giving us the idea that the only person air marshal Bill Marks trusts is probably the one who’s behind it all. The thing is, the “only person” he can trust turns out to be like everybody on the plane, basically everybody he encounters. As the film goes on, he keeps telling people that he trusts them and then relying on them to help. And that’s fine when it’s just Nancy (Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery) and the lady who wants to sit by the window (Julianne Moore), but pretty soon it becomes Nancy and Window Lady and the pilot and the co-pilot and the little Paddington girl and the doctor and the cop and essentially everyone he takes the trouble to talk to one-on-one who then continues living. So by the end, we’re really biting our nails and racking our brains, wondering which one of these trusted “friends” is going to provide the film’s inevitable, “Et tu, Brute?” moment.
Structurally, the film is more like a cozy mystery than an action movie. I remember back in the day when people were calling Passenger 57 “Die Hard on a plane.” This is more like And Then There Were None on a plane. (I’m not giving hints about the ending, just tossing out the name of a well-known cozy.) People keep dropping dead, and the audience (like the protagonist) knows the killer is right there somewhere. It’s not like anybody can leave the airplane. They’re in the middle of a trans-Atlantic flight. This makes the movie suspenseful and fun, although ultimately it ends exactly like an episode of Murder She Wrote, which is a bit disappointing.
Non-Stop doesn’t appear to be trying to do anything too smart or clever or deep. I suppose it is making a statement. Not everyone who appears “suspicious” to you is bad. That seems to be what the movie is getting at. Air Marshal Marks is a jittery guy, perhaps made more paranoid by his job. The early scenes show us that he pays attention to everything going on around him. He notices everyone, every action. And at a distance, everyone behaves in a way that could be found suspect. But then once you get to know someone, human instincts kick in, and human interactions let you know whether the person is dangerous or trustworthy. This is sort of an iffy life philosophy—I mean, what if you have bad instincts?—but it works out for Marks. His gut instincts seem pretty sound (although he makes some rather questionable choices).
Neeson is a great actor and has become a bankable action star, more than capable of carrying this kind of movie through sheer charisma. He makes Bill Marks sympathetic and compelling (if odd).
Apart from Neeson, Moore’s character was my favorite in the movie, simply because she always seems to be up to something, and she’s such a pleasure to watch. Even though at moments she seems only incidental to the actual plot, her character always feels fully realized and interesting, like a real person who could be hiding sinister secrets and is almost certainly hiding innocent secrets. She feels more complex than her role. She’s my favorite one in the movie by far.
I also really enjoyed Michelle Dockery as the flight attendant Nancy, though it’s harder to imagine that character’s life beyond her part in the story.
Corey Stoll is really good, too. I kept trying to place his face, and then when I saw his name, I remembered how much I loved him as Hemingway in Midnight in Paris. Scoot McNairy is really good, too (better than his lines, in fact). I also liked Corey Hawkins, Omar Metwally, Jason Butler Harner, and Nate Parker.
Best Scene:
I love that in this movie the best (and only) way to convince someone you are honest is to stare deeply into his/her eyes and look forlorn (or offended). (I actually do think that’s a major point the movie is selling. Technology and media spin can confuse you, but real human connections based on instinct and trust will never let you down.)
For me, the film’s strongest scene is when Neeson’s character has his early heart-to-heart with Nancy (Michelle Dockery). So much depends on what transpires there.
The movie works, though, because it feels so fluid. It’s hard to get attached to any one particular scene because the whole story moves quickly and seems like it’s all one piece. (And I guess that makes sense for a film called Non-Stop.)
Best Action Sequence:
Neeson really gets to be a badass in this movie. At one point, he’s jumped by like seventy-five guys armed with make-shift weapons that look heavy and sharp, and in about two minutes, he beats them all up using only his head. I haven’t seen such daredevil heroics from a man over sixty since Roger Moore played James Bond. Basically, if anybody comes after this guy, it’s just too bad for them. There’s not a lot of suspense in the fight scenes. Neeson’s a beast.
His first fight in the lavatory is really something else. The way he explains it after the fact is almost funny. It’s like sometimes you just can’t help killing people…because you just have to…you know…you don’t want to…but you’re Liam Neeson…and they’re not…so…
I also like the final action sequence of the movie, especially the bit with the seatbelt, though I will admit it’s kind of corny.
Best Scene Visually:
I love the moment when Marks yells, “Nancy!”
(By the way, what is it with airplane movies and the name Nancy? My parents were watching Aiport 75 the other day, and I swear, like everybody in it was named Nancy. Well, maybe it was just Karen Black’s character, but Nancy Olson was in the cast, too, and in the movie Pollyanna, she plays a character named Nancy. I guess I’m just sensitive to the name Nancy. Lupita Nyong’o’s character is named Gwen, but she delivers what few lines she has like she’s playing Nancy in Oliver!)
Anyway, what happens right after Neeson’s character yells, “Nancy!” is worth seeing.
The Negatives:
Several times, Neeson’s character declares dramatically, “This was never about the money!” But then when somebody finally asks him what it is about, he stares smolderingly into the distance and answers vaguely, “I don’t know.”
For me, that moment was kind of the movie in miniature. (It feels like a confession from the writers. Maybe they should have started with the villain and worked backwards. If that is what they did, it sure doesn’t feel like what they did.)
As we watch, it becomes increasingly obvious that somebody pretty nuts is up to something because there are easier ways to steal money. I mean, this situation is so ridiculously contrived that it could only be the work of a tormented lunatic.
That said, I personally found the ending of the movie kind of anti-climactic and disappointing. I mean, the villain could have been anyone. And wondering who it was seemed so exciting—until we finally found out, and then it was like, “Oh. Huh.”
In terms of on-screen excitement, the ending delivers. I mean, we do get reasonably invested in the characters, so we care about what happens to “the good guys.” But the reveal of the villain just falls really flat. (The motivations given for the crime seem so convoluted and like they’re just thrown in there so people will gasp, “Why, that’s the exact opposite of anything I would have thought! How ironic! How clever!” Except it’s not really clever at all. Just contrary and anti-climactic.)
While I was watching, I quickly thought up some dream scenarios for the ending. What I really wanted was Samuel L. Jackson to jump out of an overhead compartment, throw a bunch of snakes in Liam Neeson’s face, and yell some more R-rated version of, “Surprise! It was me the whole time!” Would that ending have made sense? Well, it would have made about as much sense as the ending we get. (Now, don’t get me wrong. The ending is perfectly plausible. It’s just kind of pedestrian and disappointing after all that labyrinthine set up.)
Honestly, I think Neeson’s character needs some time off because clearly he’s a little bit nuts and manages to overcomplicate everything. Marks brings new meaning to the phrase, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you.” (Well, I mean, not really new meaning, now that I think of it. He actually just reminds us of the adage.) Much of what happens during this flight is very strange, and quite a bit of it also seems avoidable to me. I mean, the scenario we’re given isn’t impossible, no, but elements of it just seem really, really, really, really improbable. Definitely contrived. (Now obviously since this is all part of an elaborate scheme, these strange events were contrived. But it’s odd that this strangely elaborate evil scheme keeps working out so well. It’s hard for me to believe that someone nuts enough to have thought up all of this even managed to make it to this stage of execution.) The movie requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief.
I personally think one of the more obvious solutions to the mystery would have been better. We suspect so many people, often people we love and feel tormented about suspecting. Is it better to have a surprise ending or a predictable ending that resonates more, seems believable and relevant to all the stuff we’ve become invested in emotionally? I’m keeping this vague to avoid spoiling the ending. (One character, in particular, would have been the best villain because that person’s unreliability would have made all the crazy stuff that keeps happening throughout the movie a little easier to believe. I don’t want to spoil the movie, but I think the writers should have kept Occam’s Razor in mind. That’s all I’ll say.)
I was also disappointed by Lupita Nyong’o’s accent. Going in, I definitely had the impression that she wasn’t in the movie much. I guessed that the preview featured her simply because of all her recent Oscar attention. (You can tell because they make a point of showing her, but she’s in the distance, or looking away, or behind someone else.) But in the one actual scene she does get, she speaks with a Britishish accent that’s vague and all over the place. Now, I’ll admit I’m not from England. Maybe the accent is actually perfect. But to me, she sounds like she’s overdoing a cockney accent like a little kid in a school production of Oliver! might. I really like Nyong’o. Her Oscar win was well deserved, and she’s more than convinced me in interviews that she’s thoroughly dedicated to her craft, so I wish she were in the movie more. Maybe I would get used to the accent. Maybe the character has some elaborate backstory that makes her accent go in and out like Amy Adams in American Hustle. Apart from the weirdness of the accent, her performance is good. But her part is frustratingly small.
Overall:
Non-Stop has a pretty ludicrous premise, but if you’re willing to overlook that, watching it is a whole lot of fun. Action packed, suspenseful, and well-acted, it features likable characters and memorable scenes of chaos and mayhem.
I liked the new RoboCop better, but, then again, what do I know? Besides how many weeks in a row can you stand to watch RoboCop? Non-Stop is a fun ride, and that’s really all that matters. Unless you have a fear of flying and a ticket to London next week (like my husband), Non-Stop is sure to provide a relaxing evening of harmless fun at the movies.