If you’re anything like me, you might be at this point: “Why do you give Liam Neeson a gun? The man is about as stable as Uranium 238. He shouldn’t even be holding a spork … especially on an airplane.”
There’s a moment at which nothing in your Liam Neeson action film makes sense any more. This happens in every.single Liam Neeson action film, so it should probably be familiar by now. And ever since Taken reintroduced European white slavery, I reach this point sooner and sooner. (You may know me as the one man in North America who was not taken with Taken. And the continual attempts to remake it in another form? Well, believe it or not, I’m not really high on them, either.)
Non-Stop has a pretty good set-up – we’re in a London-bound plane over the Atlantic when Air Marshal Bill (Neeson) gets a message on his super secure Air Marshal secret decoder text line telling him a passenger is going to die every 20 minutes unless demands are met. Cool, huh? Here’s the thing – Bill ends up killing the first guy. Wait. What? Yeah, unknown dude threatens to kill a passenger every 20 minutes until his demands are met and the first one is an anticipated kill … of the other Air Marshal. How could somebody, anybody, possibly bank on that? If you’re dealing with sanity, it has, roughly, a 0% chance of being an effective plan, give or take 0%. And this is the crux of the plot, because if the first murder doesn’t happen, well, how can you take anything seriously beyond that point?
The mountain of disbelief in Non-Stop ranks right up there with the standard book of Tea Party convictions. Non-Stop asks to accept the forces of evil: 1) either have no arrest records or were able to erase Homeland Security data 2) know Bill’s persona and history down to the last detail, including the fact that he smokes in the plane lavatories 3) can make an Air Marshal into a drug mule 4) can anticipate that an armed official will, without waiting for explanation, arbitrarily kill a known colleague based on a hint of shady behavior 5) can manipulate flight seating and protocol 6) can set up a Swiss bank account in Bill’s name, and finally 7) can count on an unstable armed official 
capable of murdering his own partner to be quelled into submission on demand. In other words, your standard Liam Neeson action film.
Now, whatcha do when you get to that point of disbelief is your own business. I stop focusing on plot and character motivation so much and try to imagine what brought the co-actors to this point … Julianne Moore, I know roles are harder to find for actresses over 35, but you’re better than “neurotic business woman.” C’mon, babe, we still wanna see you naked. We promise. Michelle Dockery, you star in the most talked about TV show on two continents, is there nothing better than “flight attendant” for you? Your entire role is to watch Liam go ballistic and say, “hmmmm, I’m ok with this.”
By the time we get to the point where the passengers are comfortable with the idea of a bomb being detonated on the plane, well, I probably should have left. Backtracking the evil and piecing it together is a piece of cinematic genius – did you make up this plot as you were writing it? Non-Stop plays like a condensed version of a TV show that doesn’t know if it’s going to be picked up – ‘Oh, they liked that? They’re picking up another six episodes? Quick write more!” “But it doesn’t make any sense…” “I said, ‘WRITE MORE!’ “ Anybody who watched the first Season of 24 knows exactly what I’m talking about.
Once again, Liam’s left to sulk
Aggressive stance, he buys in bulk
Hey, here’s some fun —
Give him a gun
He’s only unstable as The Hulk
Rated PG-13, 106 Minutes
D: Jaume Collet-Serra
W: John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach and Ryan Engle
Genre: Unstable Neeson
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Rogue Air Marshal supporters
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The contrivance police
