Non-Stop Action or Non-Stop Disappointment?

Who doesn’t love a movie in which an extremely attractive, clever, and unbelievably cool protagonist saves a group of squealing civilians when the unexpected comes hurtling at them in the form of a runaway train or spiraling jet? The genre of action/suspense movies has grown dramatically in the past few years, and it seems like they are all the same: cool protagonist overcomes adversity to overcome the disgustingly evil (yet seemingly normal) antagonist. How long will we keep producing the same movie before it becomes boring?

Our culture has embraced an obsession with paranoia that has been around since The Twilight Zone. I mean come on, the whole premise of the show is that a supposedly safe elevator unexpectedly gives out and sends its occupants into…The Twilight Zone: crash! Spooky as it may be, this idea launched modern media culture into an era of paranoia and we are hooked. We are curious by nature and “what if” is always the question of the day. We love to see supposedly safe objects fail so we have a renewable source to feed our desire to be paranoid: Flight, Unstoppable, Air Force One, Olympus Has Fallen, White house Down, Non-Stop. These are all movies in which something deemed safe and secure turns out not to be; we eat the suspense genre up because it makes us think about how safe we really are.

Non-Stop is just like the other movies in its genre. It has the cool protagonist (Liam Neeson), an unexpected danger, and all the screaming civilians he could save! On this daring adventure, Neeson also encounters all things cliché to suspenseful movies: a spontaneous love interest, a backstabbing friend, the death of a character who is seemingly the only one who can get them to ground safely, and last but not least… I’m being framed! If you have an obsession with these plot devices I definitely recommend that you go see the movie Cliché… I mean Non-Stop. It is puzzling to me that directors can make a movie that is the same as a billion other movies and still make money!

I think that Non-Stop was way too cliché for my taste. Don’t get me wrong I love a good action move, but that is what I like: a good action movie. There were far too many conveniences in the plot that probably wouldn’t have happened if this happened for real. The odds of the planets aligning enough for this movie’s plot conveniences to be true are even less than being lucky enough to find your kidnapped daughter after searching through France with little evidence and a lot of speculation… oh wait. And what was with the text messages floating and bouncing all over the screen. I wanted to see Liam Neeson kicking ass and taking names not the newest rendition of Texts on a plane featuring aggravation and near-sightedness.

If I learned anything from this movie it’s that—even at sixty-five—if you mess with Liam Neeson he can still find you, and he will kill you. Liam Neeson is a great action hero, but when you make him have exposition as an alcoholic it is less than convincing. Although his action scenes were awesome, they were predictable; in fact, I think they were the only predictable thing in this movie. Most of the rest made no sense and was full of plot holes the size of the protagonist’s drinking problem…or was it Denzel Washington’s drinking problem in Flight? I always get these movies confused. Anyway, I do recommend that you see this movie. Just don’t think about it too much or you will be in a state of non-stop confusion.