Liam Neeson. It’s almost all you need to know. His rugged good looks charged with anguish, he’s a man with a past, a man with a job to be done, and there you have it, 50% of the requirements for a good action-thriller already in place: a hero with a flaw. If you love the genre, Non-Stop has most of the rest in place too: for most of the film I was at the edge of my seat, eyes wide, relishing the suspense.
The discriminating film viewer will no doubt note that Non-Stop, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, has quite a collection of genre-markers: anything done at a high altitude is instantly more exciting; random group of people locked in a confined space with no escape, complete with token hot girl, ethnic suspects galore and enigmatic crew, under-used star (Julianne Moore), foreshadowing, fast flying false suspicions, obscene amounts of money, and good old fashioned ingenuity pitted against technology put to malicious use. I may have missed a few, but that’s OK.
Would a superlative action-thriller rise above the genre to give the audience, if not more, then something a bit different? No doubt. Drinking an inexpensive generic beer at the neighborhood pub at the end of a long day is not quite the same experience as indulging in my favorite pale ale, but, just like Non-Stop, it gets the job done. And did I mention Liam Neeson?
Non-Stop (USA/France, 106 min, 2014)
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra; Screenplay: John W. Richardson, Chris Roach, Ryan Engle; Story: Josh W. Richardson; Cast: Liam Neeson, Lupita Nyong’o, Julianne Moore, Nate Parker, Michelle Dockery, Linus Roache, Scoot McNairy, Corey Stoll; Music: John Ottman; Cinematography: Flavio Martinez Labiano.
