Nowhere else...
...would you basically have to get felt up/totally naked just to sit somewhere for an hour or two.
...would your 'seat' be considered an acceptable place to spend more than ten minutes.
...would seven pretzels be considered a snack, unless you still count your age in months old.
And absolutely nowhere else would you feel ecstatic by having a cold plastic wall to lean against (let alone being equally thrilled to not have that at all, but a place to extend one of your legs - occasionally).
But nowhere else is like an airplane. And up there? Logic is like a crying baby. You can bring it with you, but it's not really welcome.
In Non-Stop, Liam Neeson takes his special skill set to 30,000 feet, playing Bill Marks, Alcoholic Air Marshall. While basically any action film (starring an 8 foot tall, sixty-one year old Irishman, no less) may ask you carefully stow logic in the overhead cabin above you, Non-Stop pushes this request to new heights. Especially by the end. But along the way? Well, it's not only got just enough thrills to keep you interested, but it's got a frantic Neeson trying to do his job, dammit! And as far as I'm concerned, that's good enough for me.
The plot is simple: A passenger on board an overseas flight will be killed every twenty minutes, unless 150 million dollars is transferred to this account. The catch? The guy doing the killings is on the flight (well, sort of, anyway). That means that we're going to get a lot of close-ups of random ugly-ass guys, so someone in the room can point and say, Oh, it's totally that f--king guy. It's basically like the special education version of Clue. It's in the airplane, they're using the same weapon, and it ain't Col. Mustard. So, this shouldn't take long.
Fortunately, it's a little more difficult than that, only because this plane is filled to the brim with a record-level of suspicious-looking a-holes. Hell, even Julianne Moore can't escape scrutiny, as she inexplicably dons Brick Top's glasses and goes all Nancy Drew on us. It's a ludicrous, silly ride, but that's a good thing. What would you expect from a movie based on a plane called Non-Stop? Tender moments during an in-flight movie? F--k that. You want a hole in the fuselage, and at least one or two seats being sucked out, right? I mean, everybody does.
Hopefully in each of those seats, are the obnoxious Yays and Boos. They are the worst kind of single-serving friends ever, as they believe that any armrest is their armrest, and their bladders? Well, it's not a stretch when I tell you, are non-existent.
...would you basically have to get felt up/totally naked just to sit somewhere for an hour or two.
...would your 'seat' be considered an acceptable place to spend more than ten minutes.
...would seven pretzels be considered a snack, unless you still count your age in months old.
And absolutely nowhere else would you feel ecstatic by having a cold plastic wall to lean against (let alone being equally thrilled to not have that at all, but a place to extend one of your legs - occasionally).
But nowhere else is like an airplane. And up there? Logic is like a crying baby. You can bring it with you, but it's not really welcome.
The plot is simple: A passenger on board an overseas flight will be killed every twenty minutes, unless 150 million dollars is transferred to this account. The catch? The guy doing the killings is on the flight (well, sort of, anyway). That means that we're going to get a lot of close-ups of random ugly-ass guys, so someone in the room can point and say, Oh, it's totally that f--king guy. It's basically like the special education version of Clue. It's in the airplane, they're using the same weapon, and it ain't Col. Mustard. So, this shouldn't take long.
Fortunately, it's a little more difficult than that, only because this plane is filled to the brim with a record-level of suspicious-looking a-holes. Hell, even Julianne Moore can't escape scrutiny, as she inexplicably dons Brick Top's glasses and goes all Nancy Drew on us. It's a ludicrous, silly ride, but that's a good thing. What would you expect from a movie based on a plane called Non-Stop? Tender moments during an in-flight movie? F--k that. You want a hole in the fuselage, and at least one or two seats being sucked out, right? I mean, everybody does.
Hopefully in each of those seats, are the obnoxious Yays and Boos. They are the worst kind of single-serving friends ever, as they believe that any armrest is their armrest, and their bladders? Well, it's not a stretch when I tell you, are non-existent.
 |
| Show of hands, okay? How many of you can't believe that Neeson is in this movie? |
Yaaaaaaaaay!
- I love when tough-guys in movies don't answer people. Not don't answer to people, just ignore them altogether.
- Julianne Moore, of only because her character's not from Boston, which is a plus, but also because my wife genuinely gets sad when she sees Moore.
- Okay, this whole movie could have been called Text Battle over the Atlantic, but having all the texting-based communication appear onscreen was rad.
- This exchange: Moore: I don't know what you want me to to! Neeson: (without explaining it further) Please. do it.
- There is a fight in the bathroom that is, pardon the pun, the f--king shit. I think I laughed only because I didn't know what else to do. My wife? She was horrified.
- They search a guys camera and it's got nothing but cleavage pics from the hot chick on the plane. In real life, that's creepy. In a movie? It's appreciated.
- Neeson parades this one suspect through the plane for sooooo long it's pretty much comedic gold.
- Neeson's growl has become the stuff of legend. Here, he lets out a particularly awesome one, saying only this: KYLE!
- And finally, speaking of Kyle, this guy is my favorite tertiary character in any movie ever. Not only does he get the lone F-bomb, which is sweet, but the last five minutes spent with him are hysterical. He gets knocked out, he's back up! - landing the plane, no less, and is safely standing outside of it on the ground, in what is probably ninety seconds of film. F--king hysterical!
 |
| Nothing suspicious here. |
Boooooooooooo!
- First class. Used to be a better meal. Now, it's a better life.
- Personality quirks. An air-marshall, who doesn't like take-off? Absurd, I say. Ab. Surd.
- Dude, Other Cop Guy? This guy was just a pinch more of Dapper Dan's Pomade away from completing his Halloween costume, Serial Rapist.
- Passenger Bingo. No way you could tell rows and seats from those screens. Nope. I refuse.
- Moore overreacts to being called ma'am. Again. I think this is in all her movies now.
- If someone says What's going on here? and you're answer is silence, followed by showing them a rotting f--king corpse, I'm pretty sure you're a horrible person.
- Random people getting answers. I dare you to not throw a personal fit when Neeson has to explain himself to the worst group of f--ktards ever put to film.
- Not only that, but then he has to give this whole speech to these bitches. I'm not a good man...
- Little Girl. Okay, we've got a kid flying solo, that makes sense. But when she has to embody Neeson's own daughter (who tragically died, perhaps? I don't remember) it veers from Aww to just Aww-ful. And besides, there's a motherf--king bomb, on this motherf--king plane. Ain't got time for no little girls, bro.
- Can you buy, or make, I suppose, a bomb without a f--king timer on it? It seems awfully courteous of a f--king psychotic hi-jacker to always neatly place one front-and-center, you know? And why go to all that trouble of buying a timer anyway, when it doesn't even function properly. I'm pretty sure the last 19 seconds took just under 19 minutes.
- Character development. Yes, we need conversation to explain things...but, um, that whole bomb thing may be more important than a burgeoning bro-mance with the dude from the NYPD.
- And finally, what happened at the ending. Not only the cheesy smile that led to the credits, but the fact that my wife was still awake to see them. She falls asleep for everything. Everything. But she didn't miss a minute of this one. She was awake...dare I say, non-stop?
Wow. I probably spent more time on this post than they did on the script.
But hey, where else can you get such in-depth analysis about a throw-away action movie, written in a such a poorly-written fashion? Yep, you guessed it:
Nowhere else.