Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: A new Liam Neeson potboiler is headed for theaters, so we’re singling out the best movies of the star’s aging ass-kicker renaissance (excepting The Grey, which we’ve already covered for a past Watch This series).
Non-Stop (2014)
Jaume Collet-Serra’s contributions to Liam Neeson’s post-Taken cycle of boozy Catholic-guilt thrillers (a.k.a. the Neesoniad) are destined to be studied by future Neesonologists not only for their awesome entertainment value but for the way they have turned the actor’s predilection for self-parody into a paranoid-allegorical subgenre that usually involves him playing Hitchcockian chump to an insane conspiracy. Among these films, Non-Stop comes closest to achieving smart-dumb perfection, casting Neeson (who’s in top form in terms of both speaking volume and self-flagellation) as an alcoholic air marshal who is taunted via text by a mastermind who’s committing various Clue-style murders on his London-to-New-York flight.
This already delirious locked-room mystery premise is imparted with certain dreamlike qualities by the fact that Non-Stop appears to be set inside the world’s largest airplane, which is crisscrossed by the camera in interesting ways. Factor in an assortment of random overqualified actors (including Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o, Scoot McNairy, and Corey Stoll) and a rapidly escalating plot that involves blackmail, blow darts, terrorism, and a briefcase of cocaine, and what you end up with is the sort of irrational anxiety dream one might have after falling asleep to a Liam Neeson movie on a flight. In this context, it’s worth mentioning that the climax includes a ludicrous moment of nosedive-induced weightlessness.
Yet Non-Stop isn’t some kind of psychotronic B-movie howler. Collet-Serra has clear opinions about basic democratic values and post-9/11 security theater, and the movie’s politics are about the closest thing it has to airtight story logic. (The same is true of Collet-Serra’s subsequent Neeson collaboration, The Commuter, a similarly literal vehicle that’s kind of about the subprime mortgage crisis.) It helps that Collet-Serra is as committed to directing the film as Neeson is to acting in it. Taken may have turned him into a one-man action-thriller archetype, but it is Neeson’s insistence on playing fuck-ups that has made the Neesoniad into our preeminent star text: a veritable tragic saga of the multiplex in which protagonists with similar backstories and insta-forgettable names (he’s “Bill Marks” in this one) blur into a single Neeson figure, the divorced-ex-cop-widower-father-drunk.
In Non-Stop, this character is semi-incompetent, and it least part of the fun is watching him get put through the wringer by Collet-Sera’s wackadoodle pursuits—namely, his collage-like Hitchcockiana, love of twists, and apparent fondness for using cellphones as plot devices. There’s even a point where Marks owns up to his failures in front of the passengers with earth-shattering, genuinely moving conviction. If Neeson is our ideal of a movie-star authority stand-in, then this is who we really are: passengers on a nonsensical flight-slash-dinner-game from hell, protected by the loudest and most inebriated man with a gun.
Availability: Non-Stop is available for rental or purchase on Amazon, Google Play, Apple, YouTube, Microsoft, Fandango, Redbox, AMC On Demand, and VUDU.
12 Comments
I love this one. It’s an absolute blast to watch. I saw it at the cinema when it came out with low expectations but it was so entertaining.
I liked how the whodunnit aspect was actually a competently constructed headscratcher. Maybe not peak Agatha Christie but kept me guessing to some degree at least (the only thing I remember being 100% sure of was that Julianne Moore definitely was a red herring).
At least in this new movie coming out, he’s acknowledging that he’s “too old for this shit.”
God, I love this movie. Even more than Taken. Julianne Moore is actually funny here (such a great dramatic actress, but humor hasn’t been her strongpoint), and the supporting cast is indeed strong. Linus Roache, Shea Whigham, Anson Mount — they’re all here, too! Thinking of similar airplane-violence-themed comps — Air Force One, Flightplan, Red Eye, Turbulence come to mind — and yeah, Non-Stop is the best of the bunch.
I saw this film solely on the basis of this sketch.
I still say “Michelle Puh-ffeifers?!” whenever her name comes up.
Funnily enough, out of all the films shooting at least parts in Iceland around the time (both Prometheus and Thor: The Dark World using Iceland as an alien setting for example), this film actually has some scenes set in Iceland but I don’t think they filmed there.
The first (and so far only, though I hope to go again once all the unbelievable bullshit is eventually over) time I went to Iceland, as the plane came in for landing at Reykjavik I looked out the window at the landscape and thought it legit looked like we’d taken a wrong turn and ended up on the moon. So, yeah, I can believe Prometheus and Thor used the place as an alien world stand-in.
“But … But Lupita was barely in the movie?!?”That’s all I remember about my reaction when i finished watching it. I dunno about the US, but here in the UK all the promotion made out like Lupita had second billing to Liam, in a shameless attempt by the studio to capitalise on the fact that it happened to be released during that whole awards season period when she became a household name!
Man, the movie adaptation of the musical ‘Hamilton’ took some liberties.
Non-stop is classic
I saw this a couple days before it was released courtesy of a friend who ran a movie theater, and it was much, much better than I expected. I’ve always liked most of the films he’s in, but Liam Neeson’s career took a complete left turn since Taken and I’m rarely disappointed. He’s over 20 years older than me but gives me hope on new trajectories in life. I’m sure that when his agent came to him with the script for Taken, Neeson simply said, “Why not?”.