You Do Need A Pilot To Know Which Way The Plane Goes-And
An Air Marshal To Boot -Liam Neeson’s “Non-Stop”-(2014)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sandy Salmon
Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, 2014
This is the first film review I have done in a while
since I have been more than happy to let the younger writers get their feet wet
in the cutthroat dog eat dog world of contemporary film reviewing where
everybody who has seen a film and has access to the Internet has become a film
critic-at least in his or her own mind and maybe that of their companions. I
laugh every time I think about what another old-time film critic Sam Lowell
mentioned a while back about the old days when film reviewers if they didn’t
just fob the review off on a younger protégé like I have done a few times of
late with my own associate Alden Riley grabbed the copy that the fawning
publicity departments at the studios put out to the press, dusted off the copy,
cut the top off and put their names there
and submitted the damn thing. And nobody was the wiser. Sometimes when I see
what the so-called democratic and universal Internet hath wrought I too long
for those old days. *
The reason I grabbed this film, Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop though is because it deals at
least tangentially with the aftermath of 9/11 something which at the personal,
social and historic level has changed the way we do the business of living in
the world just like December 7, 1941 and November 22, 1963 were other such
turning points which negated that fresher, newer world we thought we had going
for us. Since I am not giving much away about the plot this story line involves
the personal vendetta a guy had against the Federal Air Marshals program for
not stopping the horrors of 9/11 a result which included the death of his
father in the rumble of the World Trade Center. While this plot is fictious
there is enough around in the odd-ball world of conspiracy theorists who have
built up a cottage industry proclaiming the inevitable new generation of wild
boy false flags that had attached to the earlier Pearl Harbor and Jack Kennedy
assassination events.
Of all the people you would not want to be guarding the
security of an airplane on an international flight from New York to London one
alcoholic, cigarette-smoking lost soul American Federal Air Marshal Bill Marks,
the role well-regarded actor Liam Neeson plays, would be a prime candidate.
Especially if trouble was brewing. Needless to say, the trouble comes almost
the minute the plane was airborne (and before Bill has had his next drink on
the quiet). Some techno-wizard had hacked his cellphone and presented Bill with
this professional dilemma. Get, get any way possible, 150 million smackers,
dollars not a bad number if you are going to essentially hijack a plane and
face the death penalty if you fail or somebody will die every twenty minutes.
Guess what-the bodies start falling down like clockwork. For a while Bill was
befuddled, can’t figure out who or what is doing the dance of death. All he knew
was that everybody was a suspect, everybody had to be checked.
Naturally in a suspense film there have to be a number of
false flags, false leads before the real perpetrator or perpetrators are
rounded up and neutralized. Now Bill was old-school, an old beat-up, beat-down New
York City cop before somebody gave him the lifeline of an air marshal job
(despite his fear of flying-oh well) and so he roughed up everybody at 30,000
feet like he was back on the mean streets of the city. Said rough ups producing
some deaths which in true false flag fashion are marked against Bill. See the
“perp” had figured Bill out for a serious fall guy given his less than stellar
profile and had set the poor bastard up to take the fall. To do actions which
when the deal goes down will make him look like the guilty party. Bill even
puts fellow passenger and eventual love interest Jen, played by Julianne Moore,
on the grill. But not to worry Bill once the finger points his way. He gets
religion and doubles down on the perps once they up the ante with the old bomb
in the suitcase routine, a gag that has been around since about Icarus’s time
but which Bill, the pilot, or rather co-pilot since the pilot fell down as part
of the dastardly scheme, modern technology and what the hell old fashion grit
foiled without too much trouble. Pretty good for a used-up cop fall guy who
saved the day against a serious if misplaced grievance. I told you 9/11 made
things a lot tenser, made the world less livable in a number of ways. Even in fictional
films centered on the topic.
[* I mentioned above some of the pitfalls of modern day citizen film reviewers and if you
Google this film you will find a full array of reviews by those less interested
in the suspense of the film than presenting very own theories about Bill in relationship
to 9/11 including his having been in the pay variously of the Taliban, Osama
bin Laden, the usual CIA deep state gag and the Bush Family Estate. Remember
this is a fictional film please, but also remember that there are some very
lonely heart folk out there sniffing cyber-ether or something.]
