‘I’m not hijacking this plane. I’m trying to save it…’
While the world goes about its business, and the clock continues to tick, somewhere, somehow, Liam Neeson is making that one film that he keeps making over and over again. I covered this phenomenon in more depth in my review of 2021’s The Ice Road, and I speculated that as long as Neeson keeps making them, I’ll keep watching them. Non-Stop is, yet again, that one Liam Neeson film. Only this time, it’s on a plane!
When a plane is hijacked by an unnamed passenger, disgraced air marshal Bill Marks (Neeson) must try to save the aircraft amidst considerable opposition from sceptical passengers played by Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o and Corey Stoll.
As ever with these films, the concept is a simple one. And it’s executed with competence and panache. Neeson is playing his one character, of course, and the supporting cast does a sterling job in roles that are, nevertheless, pretty generic. The ace in the hole here is the ability of director Jaume Collet-Serra, working from a screenplay credited to John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach, and Ryan Engle, to create tension and suspense, and also Neeson’s knack for making us care about rote characters. In that respect, Neeson is the closest we have in the world of cinema to someone like an in-his-prime Bruce Willis. He is more than capable of carrying a movie pretty much single-handedly as many of these very similar roles have proven.
Obviously, I accept that these movies aren’t for everyone, I know they’re playing the hits from a well-worn songbook, but there is also no denying that in terms of pure entertainment, they really can’t be beaten. Bring on whatever wonderful nonsense Neeson is lining up right now. Although hopefully, the next one I imbibe will have less terrible British accents.