Non-Stop is a 2014 mystery-action film starring Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, Lupita Nyong'o and Scoot McNairy and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. This is the first Silver Pictures film to be distributed by Universal Pictures after the end of the production company's deal with Warner Bros., and the first since Weird Science. The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics.
Plot
Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is an alcoholic U.S. Air Marshal; he enrolled in the Air Marshal Service after he was discharged from the New York City Police Department. On a Boeing 767 non-stop flight from New York to London aboard British Aqualantic Flight 10, midway over the Atlantic Ocean, Marks receives text messages on his secure phone stating that someone on the plane will die every 20 minutes unless $150 million is transferred into a specific bank account.
Breaking protocol, Marks consults with Jack Hammond, the other Air Marshal on the flight. Hammond is revealed to be smuggling cocaine in a briefcase. Marks confronts Hammond and the two get into an argument that results in an altercation. Marks ends up killing Hammond during the fight in a lavatory, justifying it as self-defense. This occurs exactly at the 20 minute mark, resulting in the first death. As Marks attempts to stall for time with the texter, he works with Nancy Hoffman (Michelle Dockery), a flight attendant, and Jen Summers (Julianne Moore), a passenger seated next to Marks, to discover the texter's identity. When the next 20 minutes expires, the Captain (Linus Roache) suddenly dies, presumably of poisoning.
Back in the U.S., the media and the public becomes convinced that Marks is hijacking the plane, as the bank account is in his name and a passenger uploads video footage of Marks treating passengers aggressively and that video is broadcast on television. Co-pilot Kyle Rice (Jason Butler Harner) has been instructed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to ignore Marks and land in Iceland, the closest destination; he diverts the plane but continues to cautiously trust Marks. Cell phone programmer Zack White, a passenger on the plane, is asked by Marks to design a hack which will cause the texter's cell phone to ring. It is discovered in the pocket of passenger Charles Wheeler, who claims to have never seen the phone before. After being physically subdued by Marks during the interrogation, Wheeler dies in a similar fashion to the Captain (with symptoms of poisoning.)
In the lavatory, Marks finds a hole in the wall that allowed someone to shoot a poison dart at the Captain; he finds that Wheeler was struck with a dart as well. While Marks and Summers try to gain access to the texter's phone, it suddenly activates, sending automated messages to the TSA implying that Marks is suicidal and is going to detonate a bomb on the plane.
Marks finds the bomb hidden in the cocaine smuggled by Hammond. Passengers attempt to disable Marks, convinced he is a terrorist. They overpower Marks, but passenger Tom Bowen uses Marks' gun to make them move away. Marks finally explains the situation, and they agree to work with him.
Unable to land the plane in time, he attempts to initiate a protocol of least damage: by descending the plane to 8,000 feet to equalize air pressure, placing the bomb in the rear of the plane, covering it with baggage and moving the passengers to the front to contain the explosion, and minimizing casualties. As the protocol goes into effect, a fighter jet escort joins the airliner and warns that if it descends into civilian airspace, it will be shot down.
Watching a video clip of himself handling passengers, Marks notices Bowenâ€"whom he had initially cleared of any suspicionâ€"slipping the texter's phone into Wheeler's pocket. Realizing that Bowen is the culprit, he learns that Bowen's father was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and that he and White are ex-military. Appalled by the lack of security at U.S. airports after 9/11, Bowen believes framing an air marshal as a terrorist will lead to drastically increased security. Bowen is prepared to die with the plane and shoots White, who planned to parachute off with the money, after Marks persuaded White to disarm the bomb. As Bowen prepares to shoot Marks, Rice disregards orders from his fighter jet escort and descends, giving an advantage to Marks in the following fight where he kills Bowen with a head shot. Still alive from Bowen's shot, White then attacks Marks but is also defeated. Immediately afterwards, Marks escapes from the blast radius of the bomb just in time, while White is killed by the detonation.
Rice manages an emergency landing at an air base in Iceland after the bomb explodes. The plane is damaged in the landing, but no one else dies. Marks is hailed as a hero in the media, and he and Summers begin a friendship.
Cast
Filming
Filming began on November 1, 2012 at York Studios in Maspeth, Queens, New York City, then continued at JFK Airport on December 7, 2012, and at Long Island MacArthur Airport. This was the inaugural movie filmed at York Studios.
Reception
Critical response
Non-Stop received mixed to positive reviews. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a rating of 60%, based on 199 reviews, with an average score of 5.8/10. The site's consensus states, "While Liam Neeson is undoubtedly an asset, Non-Stop wastes its castâ€"not to mention its solid premise and tense setupâ€"on a poorly conceived story that hinges on a thoroughly unbelievable final act." On another aggregation website, Metacritic, it holds a score of 56 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Chris Nashawaty, writing for Entertainment Weekly, delivered a positive review, grading it "B", and observing: "At a certain point either you'll fasten your seat belt and go with Non-Stop's absurd, Looney Tunes logic or you won't. Against my better judgment, I went with it. After all, Neeson has shown time and again that he's the closest thing Hollywood has these days to a box office Rumpelstiltskin. He can spin cheese into gold." David Denby, for The New Yorker, was ambivalent on the film's overall scope, but praised Neeson, writing, "Neeson, who brings enormous conviction to these late-career action roles, moves his big body through confined spaces (virtually the entire movie takes place in the airplane) with so much power that you expect him to rip out the seats."
Richard Corliss, for Time, had a blasé opinion, stating that the film "...is no more or less than what it intends to be.." and posits the question: "Why demand logic of an action movie released in February, when audiences just want a nice, bumpy ride?" Susan Wloszczyna of RogerEbert.com wrote, "Liam Neeson is not going to be knocked off his perch as the elder statesman of B-movie tough guys any time soon...", and continued, "The rather ingenious if preposterous premise, one that only goes way off course in the heavy-handed third act...'Non-Stop' is so ridiculously entertaining in spite of its occasional lapses in real-world logic." Tom Shone, reviewing for The Guardian, maintained a similar tone in his review, saying of Neeson, "He's at his best striding up and down the aisles of the aircraft with that big, rolling gait of his, carving out great wads of air with his hands, barking orders, his face in Rodin-ish profile, his destiny, like Mitchum's, enlivened by a nobility far greater than the film he finds himself in â€" the true sign of a B-movie king.", and of Moore "...Neeson enjoys a nice, relaxed rapport with Moore, whose looser, Keaton-esque side seems to come out when cast opposite noble hunks."
Box office
The film opened in 3,090 theaters in the United States and Canada. It grossed $10 million on opening day and was ranked #1 at the end of weekend with $28.8 million, ahead of former box office leader The Lego Movie and the new release Son of God.
The film earned $92.1 million at the North American box office. In other markets it took in an additional $130.6 million, for a total of $222.8 million worldwide. Its budget for making the film was $50 million.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack was composed by John Ottman. The record was released on April 3, 2014 via Varèse Sarabande label.
Home media
Non-Stop was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on June 10, 2014.
Sequel
On June 11, 2014, Entertainment Weekly reported that in an interview with producer Joel Silver, he talked about the possibility of a sequel, and stated that it will not be happening on a plane again. "I need to think of a way to put them in an equal situation. But when I make a sequel I like to replicate the experience, not replicate the movie. I'm not going to put them on a plane again, of course. He has a touch of Sherlock Holmes in that he has to figure out what's going on and then he has to figure out how to solve it. I think that character's a great character and we'll try to figure something else to do. I haven't thought about it yet. But I have to, sooner or later."
References
External links
- Official website
- Non-Stop at the Internet Movie Database
- Non-Stop at Rotten Tomatoes
- Non-Stop at Metacritic
- Non-Stop at Box Office Mojo
- Non-Stop at AllMovie
