Non-Stop

March 18, 2014 - Lady Mary Crawley leaves the safety of Downton Abbey only to find danger in the skies over the Atlantic. Fortunately, Liam Neeson is there to save her and Julianne Moore and almost everyone else on board the non-stop flight.

Neeson plays federal air marshal William Marks. When we first meet him, he's sitting in his vehicle at the airport, adding some extra Irish to his coffee. So, we know right away that Bill has a problem with alcohol. Is this really who we want as the air marshal on our flight from New York to London? More questions about Bill arise when threatening text messages from an apparent hijacker lead to suspicion that Bill himself may be the bad guy. But, passenger Julianne Moore and stewardess Michelle Dockery keep the faith and help Bill when he needs it most.

Overall review: ** This is not a terrible film, but it has some issues that keep me from giving it more than two out of four stars. For one thing, it's set on a plane. Because it's a confined space, the action sequences are generally brief and confined to even smaller spaces. The best sequence (and it's a pretty good one) comes near the end.

The limitations of the action sequences make it necessary for the movie to rely heavily on suspense – a whodunnit in the sky, if you will. As mentioned earlier, the movie raises the possibility that Liam Neeson's character is the bad guy. It does so more than once. But, seriously, he's Liam Neeson. Of course he's not the bad guy. And, because the movie focuses so much on his character, we don't know enough about the other people on the plane to care whether they're the hijacker or whether they die.

Finally, my third issue is that this movie leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Most of these questions concern the plot, so I'll use an example that doesn't. Before Bill gets on the plane, he calls (or answers a call from) his supervisor. Apparently, the schedule calls for Bill to have a three-day layover in London. Bill says he can't do that. He doesn't tell his supervisor why and we never find out. But, from what we do learn about Bill's life, it seems as though he could easily spend a few days in London – except the filmmakers need Bill to appear as though he might possibly, just maybe, if he weren't Liam Neeson, be a hijacker.