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A R T S & CU LT U RE
Non-Stop: Liam Neeson is an Ass-Kicking,
Alcoholic Air Marshal
DAN STYLER
Staff Writer
I see a lot of movies in theatre, but I rarely
walk out of them thinking about how bad they
were or about how I wish I hadn’t spent the
money I paid to see them.
In the past year, only The Purge (one of the
worst and most disappointing movies I have ever
seen) and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
(Peter Jackson can legitimately go to hell for
thinking it was reasonable to drag this one book
out into three long – oh, so long – and boring
movies that, when they are finished, will have
robbed movie-goers of at least $36 over the
course of three years) have achieved “That was
an absolute waste of time and money” status.
Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson, is not a
great movie, and it is not without its flaws. But
it’s not bad, and I certainly didn’t leave the theatre feeling cheated; it wasn’t a waste of time
or money. Then again, due to a combination of
coupons and SCENE points, my girlfriend and I
paid only $3 – in total – to see the movie.
Neeson’s career is interesting, if not bizarre.
Twenty years ago, he starred in Schindler’s List;
he was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading
Role at the 1994 Academy Awards for his portrayal of Oskar Schindler. Now, at the age of 61,
he spends a lot of time kicking ass in movies like
Taken, The Grey, and this one, Non-Stop. And he
is good at it.
His character in Non-Stop, United States
Federal Air Marshal Bill Marks, is troubled. His
daughter died when she was 8, his wife divorced
him, and he is an alcoholic. In fact, he drinks
in his car before stepping on the trans-Atlantic
flight to London that this movie centres around.
Oh, he is also inordinately afraid of airplane
takeoffs; during takeoff, he wraps some stupid
ribbon that his daughter gave him around his
fingers as a kind of safety mechanism. Marks
has problems.
You might think that abusing alcohol as an
Air Marshal isn’t that irresponsible… because
really, what are the chances that – particularly
in light of post-9/11 heightened security – an Air
Marshal is really going to have to do anything
THUMBS UP to. . .
Kate Sutherland’s twitter.
The Obiter Dicta
on a flight other than enjoy their comfortable,
first-class seat?
Well you’re wrong. And Non-Stop proves just
how wrong you are. Early in the flight, Marks
receives a text message via his secure Air Marshal network, telling him that unless $150 million is deposited into an account, people will
begin dying; a new person will be killed every
twenty minutes.
with them about the threat he is facing: his
supervisors believe that he is a terrorist (at least
partially because they did some research and the
account the person messaging Marks demanded
money be put into is in Marks’ name) and news
agencies are already panning him as such (which
reinforces the passengers’ concerns, because
they’re watching these broadcasts on their airplane TVs). Marks’ best moment is when he is
# yolo .
According to the Transportation Security Administration’s website, the “Federal Air
Marshal Service promotes confidence in the
nation’s civil aviation system through the effective deployment of Federal Air Marshals (FAMs)
to detect, deter, and defeat hostile acts targeting U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, and
crews.”
Unfortunately for Marks, a series of events
framing him as an Air Marshal-turned-hijacker
of this seemingly doomed flight did very little to
“promote confidence” amongst passengers.
First, as promised, someone is dead within
twenty minutes – the other Air Marshal on the
flight, Agent Hammond. The surprise is who did
the killing: Air Marshal Marks, after an altercation with Hammond in the plane’s bathroom
(to be fair, Hammonds was a cocaine-smuggling
lunatic that deserved to die).
Then more people die, including the pilot.
And everyone on board is pretty freaked out
because Agent Marks is prowling around the
plane like a starving tiger trying to figure
out who is fucking with him and people begin
demanding answers as to what the hell is going
on. It doesn’t help that no one on the ground
believes Marks when he tries to communicate
able to temporarily placate the passengers by
offering them free international travel for the
next year (in fairness, international travel is
damn expensive).
Undoubtedly, Non-Stop’s weakest moments
came once its two villains had been revealed.
The explanation for their acti ons was brief,
shaky, nonsensical, and wholly unsatisfying:
by framing Marks as an Air Marshal-turnedderanged terrorist, the real terrorists hoped to
force an increase in security measures by exposing frailties in the current system.
What was their ultimate goal? To avoid
future attacks in the same vein as the September 11th hijackings (one of the terrorists had lost
a family member in those attacks), which they
viewed as being the result of weak security in
the United States. It was not made clear why this
point needed to be made eleven years after 9/11
and result in the death of 150 innocent civilians,
or even why they needed to frame an Air Marshal to make their point. These two, even more
than Marks, have problems.
To the surprise of no one, Marks saves the
day, kills the bad guys, and the plane is landed
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