Fly Me

Right now if you go to the movies, you'll see about two dozen or so trailers for the upcoming summer blockbusters.   Each and every one of them looks the same.   It's an ultra-noise fest.   Computer graphics that portend the end of the world or some other form of mass destruction.  Thank you, assholes who run Hollywood.   They are the first in line to wring their hands when some idiot shoots up a grade school.   Oh, God, how do we let this happen?  How can we protect our children?  Yada, yada, yada.   Well, look in the mirror.

I won't see any of those summer movies.  But I will go when it's a good old fashioned thriller about an airline in peril.  You can't get go wrong with that plotline ever.  And that's why I enjoyed every pulsating moment of "Non-Stop." Indeed, the title is perfect.   The movie just doesn't...wait for it...stop.

Okay, I'm a sucker for these doomed airplane movies.  One of my favorite films of all time is "Airport," the granddaddy of them all.  A star-studded cast all trapped in a metal cylinder 35,000 feet in the sky.  The characters are all played by folks you might have found around Dean Martin's dining room table last Thanksgiving.  Some will live.  Some will die.   And, at some point, the flight attendant might be piloting the plane.

Cheesy?   You bet.   But I love this kind of cinematic Velveeta.

"Non-Stop" is not like "Airport" in that it doesn't populate the movie with a who's who of B list actors from the 70s or 80s.   As a matter of fact, there are very few recognizable names in the cast.  You do have recent Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o as a flight attendant with little to say, Julianne Moore as that passenger next to you who just wants to talk, and "Downton Abbey's" Michelle Dockery as the every helpful flight attendant who is obviously slumming it on this side of the castle.   Hell, I think she's adorable.   I might have seen this movie just for her alone.

But, I digress...

At the center of "Non-Stop" is action star Liam Neeson.  Apparently, he makes about two of these action movies every month and has been a big time box office star in his 60s.  From what I gather, he plays the same role in every one of these films.   The hero that nobody wants to believe.  Dealing with alcoholism and mourning the recent death of a family member.  Given that Neeson lost his wife, Natasha Richardson, a few years back when she fell on a ski slope and hit her head, the uneasy line between fact and fiction is crossed continually.   But, heck, if it works for Neeson, let him have his days in the sun.

In "Non-Stop," Neeson is a federal air marshall who...get it...is told that a passenger will die in-flight every 20 minutes unless he has the airline wire 150 million dollars to a bank account.  Hmmm, Neeson's been drinking, right?  Oh, he's grief-stricken at the loss of his little girl, correct?   Nobody's going to listen to him, are they?  Of course not, and that's the wonderful Hitchcockian formula that pulls you in and doesn't let go.

 "Non-Stop" is nothing more than an episode of "24" in the sky.  Jack Bauer at 35,000 feet.  Nobody believes him.  He looks as guilty as OJ Simpson.  And that's the fun.   You know this is all going to work out.  The fun is seeing how it does.   And, oh, yeah, you want to find out who's going to live and who's going to die.

There are holes, yes.   More than you'll find in that comfy bathrobe you refuse to throw out.   Logic should be left at the popcorn counter.  There's more than one "WTF" moment.   And you're hit with every inconsistency every five minutes.  For instance, how the hell is it possible for an airliner over the mid-Atlantic to carry television coverage of NY 1, the cable network that is devoted to local news of the five boroughs.  Yeah, that's unlikely.

But who cares?  When you go to see a movie like "Non-Stop," you simply want to see the formulaic plot points and the expected showdowns.  It's meat loaf with macaroni and cheese on the silver screen and you want two big helpings of it.

And that's why "Non-Stop" unravels a little bit in the last twenty minutes.  Because socially-conscious Hollywood intervenes and, without giving away the ending, there's one too many connections to what happened in real life on 9/11.  Thirteen years later, that fateful day is now being used to tie up the loose ends of an action thriller.

That, however, is the only misgiving I have about "Non-Stop."  It gave me exactly what I wanted from a movie like this.  It got me from Point A to Point Z.  Non-stop.

The rest of you can go to the movies this summer and watch the freakin' world blow up.  Me?  I like to keep things simple.  I just want to see an engine fail and the passengers evacuate via the chutes.

LEN'S RATING:  Three stars.

Dinner last night:  Leftover barbecue ribs and salad.