490. Non-Stop (2014)

Starring: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Running Time: 106 mins

Non-Stop is an American film about a US air marshal who must save the lives of 150 passengers on board a transatlantic flight, after he is sent threatening messages from a mysterious terrorist, demanding that $150m be wired into his account, otherwise everyone on board will be at risk.

Well, it may be cheesy, and it may be preposterous, but this film is unbelievably cool! It’s not an amazingly original cinematic masterpiece, but what it does do is brilliantly provide you with over an hour and a half of gripping tension, excitement, action, mystery and fun.

Basically, the whole premise of this film is a rip-off of both Taken and Air Force One. It’s got Liam Neeson finding out a complex and unpredictable mystery, and the whole “i’m going to kill someone every [insert time period here]unless you give into my demands” on a plane.

However, the fact that it’s quite unoriginal isn’t at all disappointing to see, because it melds the two concepts from those films elegantly, making for an experience as exciting and as unpredictable as those two.

It’s not only the fact that you have this combination of fun and excitement so perfectly presented in this film, but it’s the completely unpredictable nature of the mystery that really makes it as thrilling as it is at times.

From the start, you’re being presented with all sorts of different characters, all suspicious in absolutely everything you do, and the sheer quantity of potential suspects leaves you constantly turning your head, changing your ideas and concept of what is actually going on in this chaotic scenario, and that really adds to the unpredictability and tension.

You’ve also got a very simple style of plot laid over the complex mystery beneath. With the odd person being picked off one by one, it often feels like you’re reading some sort of modern, hyped-up Agatha Christie novel, which somehow leaves you thinking that it was the air hostess [the butler]that did it…

There is a point at which the story does go a bit into overdrive with the amount of possible outcomes to the story, but it’s not actually frustrating to see this ridiculous quantity of ideas being hurled at you constantly, because that speeds the film up, makes it again more unpredictable, and more exciting.

Whether the writers were intending to create a psychological thriller element, in that it may be the air marshal himself who’s the terrorist, I don’t know. However, it doesn’t matter if you go for that storyline, or another, where he’s being persecuted relentlessly for something he hasn’t done, because it’s still hugely exciting.

Overall, I’ll give this an 8.4, because it was a massively thrilling, exciting, unpredictable, fun and action-packed story that keeps you guessing from the edge of your seat the whole way through.