{"id":2298,"date":"2014-03-04T11:14:26","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T18:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2298"},"modified":"2014-03-04T11:14:26","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T18:14:26","slug":"non-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2014\/03\/04\/non-stop\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Stop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Liam<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra
\nStarring: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, Omar Metwally, Nate Parker, Scoot McNairy, Jason Butler Harner
\nRated: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some language, sensuality and drug references<\/p>\n

The pre-Oscar season of dull movies studios don\u2019t expect to succeed is finally easing a bit. \u201cNon-Stop\u201d is a film that\u2019s almost summer-action-thriller-esque. It isn\u2019t particularly ground-breaking, but succeeds in its aim to entertain, at least it does if you aren\u2019t expecting it to be a thrilling summer roller-coaster ride of a flick.<\/p>\n

Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is an air marshal, tasked with keeping passengers and crew safe on a trans-Atlantic flight. He\u2019s one of those archetypal messy heroes \u2013 a drunk, miserable, and generally a failure. Naturally, once there\u2019s a threat to his passengers (he\u2019s told via texts on his encrypted phone that a passenger will die every 20 minutes until money is transferred to a specific account), he springs into action \u2013 even though his actions frighten and confuse everyone else on the flight.<\/p>\n

This is both a closed-room mystery and a psychological thriller, and while the big reveal may not work for everybody, there\u2019s no questioning that this is a film set in and inspired by today\u2019s world of TSA scans and constant cell and internet access. The paranoia around terrorism and air travel is real, and \u201cNon-Stop\u201d taps into that, giving us passengers who are panicky and inspired by stories of resistance against hijacking. Poor Bill winds up with almost nobody on his side, especially once he starts actively trying to figure out who the killer might be.<\/p>\n

Neeson has been playing characters like this for quite a while now \u2013 tired, world-worn men with deadly abilities and a longing for a different life. He plays Bill as a defeated, almost despairing man whose obligation to protect those in his charge runs deep enough to overcome his urge to self-destruct. The rest of the cast do a good job of being red herrings \u2013 Julianne Moore as Bill\u2019s seatmate, Michelle Dockery as a stewardess Bill knows and works well with, Omar Metwally as the one doctor on the plane, and so on.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers do a good job of making the airplane seem both claustrophobic and too large for Bill to watch everyone at once. Once things really hit the fan in the final act, the special effects are decent enough that we don\u2019t have to be thrown out of the excitement by fake-looking airplanes.<\/p>\n

This is not a brilliant, intellectual film, but it succeeds in being an entertaining one if you\u2019re willing to meet it on its own level. Director Jaume Collet-Serra\u2019s other films include \u201cOrphan,\u201d which had a similar level of quality (though it leaned toward the horror end of the thriller axis rather than the action end like \u201cNon-Stop\u201d). If you\u2019re willing to overlook weaknesses and the occasional ridiculous twist, and want to be entertained for a couple of hours by a moderately clever thriller, \u201cNon-Stop\u201d is worth seeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pre-Oscar season of dull movies studios don\u2019t expect to succeed is finally easing a bit. \u201cNon-Stop\u201d is a film that\u2019s almost summer-action-thriller-esque. It isn\u2019t particularly ground-breaking, but succeeds in its aim to entertain, at least it does if you aren\u2019t expecting it to be a thrilling summer roller-coaster ride of a flick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-2298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-rated-pg-13"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-B4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2300,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions\/2300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}