Non-Stop

In years to come I think it's unlikely they'll be releasing retrospective box-sets regarding Jaume Collet-Sera cannon of films. However, from his short career so far he's proved he's a safe pair of hands when it comes to productions where the plots revolve around hidden or mysterious elements. So he's in his comfort zone here as, on a flight from New York to London, air marshall Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) receives a text from a passenger informing him that someone on the plane will be killed every 20 minutes unless a ransom is paid. The problem is Marks can't find the culprit and when the bodies start piling up his employees on the ground and the passengers and crew begin to suspect Marks himself is up to something. It's as ludicrous as it sounds. For example, though Marks is an air marshall he, get this, doesn't like flying! Always a pre-requisite qualification for that kind of job I've always thought. Crucially though, the film is a big pile of dumb fun. Collet-Sera has form when it comes to hiding plot twists (see the whammy reveal at the end of Orphan) and here he does it in the form of highlighting so many people (in the form of a cross section of society) as possible suspects, that you can't really spend much time thinking about who the culprit could be (though if you know your B-list actors you might have a fair clue about what's going down). Neeson can do this type of action malarkey in his sleep now (imagine you told someone that ten years ago), but Michelle Dockery looks in shock before anything has actually happened and Julianne Moore just looks like death warmed up. If you're not going to suspend your disbelief then don't bother checking in. For the rest of us, our first entrant in the stupidly fun Friday night film award of the year has touched down. I mean, how many films do you get where the co-pilot screams at his airplane, "Come on, you wanker!". Rating: 7/10.