All the tedium of an endless trans-Atlantic flight gets packed into the 105 minutes of "Non-Stop,'' a preposterous "thriller'' providing Oscar winner-turned action star Liam Neeson with his latest paycheck job.
Roughly 80 percent of this snoozer consists of Neeson, as alcoholic federal air marshal Bill Marks, trading less-than-scintillating text messages ("WHO ARE YOU?'' "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?'') with an unknown culprit — who threatens to start killing passengers unless $150 million is transferred into an offshore account.
Among the many nonsensical twists are that the account turns out to be in Marks' name, and our hero is tricked into killing another sky marshal traveling onboard for no seemingly plausible reason except that the screenwriters needed this to happen.
So at the same time Marks is madly texting and checking passengers' cellphones for the other end of his conversation, he's being relieved of duty by a superior on the ground who believes Marks has hijacked the JFK-to-London flight — even though the idea of Marks knowingly providing an incriminating bank account in his own name beggars the imagination.
A crew member, who's foaming at the mouth, dies while Marks is roughing up a number of passengers who serve as red herrings, including a somewhat bored-looking Julianne Moore, the film's female lead, as well as the burly Corey Stoll from "House of Cards.''
Liam Neeson and Michelle Dockery in "Non-Stop."Photo: Myles Aronowitz/Universal Pictures
But the framed Marks, who has an on-and-off alliance with the chief flight attendant (Michelle Dockery of "Downtown Abbey,'' looking sharp in a thankless role) still manages to take control, even when he isn't waving a service revolver around the cabin (not recommended behavior).
At one especially hilarious point, Marks commands rebellious passengers to sit down by promising them a year's worth of free trans-Atlantic flights.
After all, this is an airline where they somehow can watch Pat Kiernan's breathless live report from NY1 on Marks' seemingly criminal behavior in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
And this is the kind of movie where, when the villain is finally unmasked, the culprit's motives make no sense whatsoever. At least to me. Feel free to text if you manage to figure this out.
Heck, the writers can't even decide whether air marshals need to go through TSA screening or not at the airport. But they haven't miss a cliché, including the little girl flying unaccompanied on her first flight and the Arab-looking gentleman who turns out to be heroic.
Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson in "Non-Stop."Photo: Myles Aronowitz/Universal Pictures
Oh, and the concerned-looking black flight attendant — played by Oscar nominee Lupita Nyong'o ("12 Years a Slave''), who has maybe half a dozen lines of dialogue altogether.
There is relatively little action — at least until the endless text messages finally give way to an equally hoary plot device beloved by hack writers of contemporary thrillers, the bomb with a digital readout.
I'm not giving away anything that isn't in a trailer that reveals a whole lot more — including just how cheesy the special effects are in the laughable climactic sequence, which defies the laws of logic as well as physics.
Even Neeson's acting chops can't make a silk purse out of this sow's ear, whose particulars make little sense even in a fantasy context. And his character's back story, which includes a dead child and being fired from the NYPD at an age when he should be retired, doesn't help.
Neeson receives little help from Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra, who did better by the star in the plausibility-challenged but far more exciting "Unknown.''
"Non-Stop'' could be dismissed off as just another witless aerial thriller if there weren't numerous tasteless references to 9/11 — including threats to shoot the jetliner down over Iceland and a runaway beverage cart straight out of "United 93.''
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